What mattered, what stuck in his head like a bruise he kept prodding, was the feel of Jude’s body pressed to his. The way he’d whimpered into the kiss. The heat, the need, the weight of him. And the fact he’d been hard—for him.
Warren couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Stop thinking abouthim.
But the real truth kept swimming around in his head.
I’m falling for a suspect I’m assigned to investigate.
I’m the biggest risk to this operation.
And if I like this, like him, I'm compromised. If I'm compromised, Naomi's cover is blown. If her cover is blown, we both go down, and the case is lost.
Fuck.
He showered. Hot. Punishing. Scrubbing until his skin stung, as if he could rinse away the memory of Jude’s lips. He thought about getting himself off just to take the edge off, but the setting was all wrong. Too thin walled. Too risky. He’d deal with it later. And when he emerged, he was back in uniform. Mr Bailey’s uniform. School-branded hoodie. Shorts. Locs tied back. And he noticed Jude’s suitcase. Packed. No lock. Sitting right there by the bed.
DS Beckford needed to look inside.
It might be the only opportunity he had while Jude was occupied with the kids.
So he sat on the edge of the mattress, pulled the case towards him and unzipped it. He hated it. The way it felt, going through someone’s private things.Jude’sprivate things. This wasn’t a random search. This was Jude.
Jude, who he… liked. Wanted, if he was honest. Jude, who Amelia and Lily would probably tease him about “fancying.”Jesus Christ.This was the job. Information gathering. Evidence hunting. The thing he was paid to do.Trainedto do. He’d rifled through far worse before. And yet, here he was, elbow-deep in Jude’s neatly folded clothes, his packed toiletries, his spare phone chargers, and it felt wrong. As if crossing a line he wasn’t sure he could uncross.
He found nothing.
Of course he found nothing. What had he expected? A handwritten note from Callum Reid linking him directly to Radley?Idiot. He zipped it closed, guilt chewing at him, when his gaze landed on the glasses case on the nightstand. He picked it up. Slipped it into his own bag. Didn’t think too hard about why. Then slung his bag over his shoulder, gripped the handle of Jude’s, hauling them both like some overworked mule, and headed down to breakfast.
It was chaos, as expected.
Amelia was curled into Lucas’s side, his arm slung over her shoulder. Lily sat in the far corner, flanked by two other girls offering comfort. The scrape of cutlery, the hum of gossip, the occasional burst of laughter. It was all noise.
Warren’s focus went straight to the table by the window.
Jude.
Nursing a coffee as if it kept him upright. To anyone else, he probably looked composed. Controlled. But Warren saw the cracks. Felt them, almost, as if his own hands had made them.
He went over and set Jude’s case down beside him, and when Jude looked up, it winded him. Those eyes. Christ. Hurt and shame tangled together, with something else in between. Gone was the pink flush from last night. The sidelong glances, the small touches feeling like a private language.
All of it—gone.
“Thanks.” Jude pushed his chair back and stood. “Alright, Year Tens, coach will be here in ten minutes. Eat up.” Then, to Warren, without meeting his gaze for long, “Better grab something. I’ll go check on the coach.”
Then he was out the door before Warren could reply.
Warren sighed, grabbed a pastry from the buffet, bit into it on the way back, and slid into the seat Jude had vacated, straight across from Alfie Carter. The kid had earbuds in, eyes fixed on his phone. Nothing unusual for a teenager. Plenty of them livedonline more than off. But Warren’s radar didn’t work on usual. Kids who kept to themselves, who drifted on the edges, were exactly the ones crews liked to pick off.
And Alfie had already been on a list once.
The file had been clear: targeted to be a runner for one of the lines feeding Graham Radley’s network. It had only been stopped because his old man, and PC Freddie Webb, had stepped in.
Freddie Webb.
Warren drifted his gaze to the window, where Jude stood outside with the arriving coach driver, tablet in hand, rain speckling his hair. He’d heard that Jude and Freddie had once had a thing. A brief one, if Freddie’s “five minutes” at the gym was anything to go by. Still, Warren couldn’t help wondering if Freddie had seen the tattoo. The one that told a story most people wouldn’t understand, but any copper working organised crime would. If he had, Warren would’ve expected it to be logged somewhere. A note. A quiet flag. Something. But there was nothing. No mention in local intelligence, no cross-references in the Radley files, no link tying Jude Ellison to Callum Reid. As far as Worthbridge Police were concerned, Jude was clean. Because Freddie, and every other local officer, worked with surface-level data. Intel that didn’t touch sealed records or SEROCU’s encrypted archives. They didn’t know what to look for. The real history, Jude’s buried one, had only surfaced when Warren’s unit dug deeper, threading through the classified files and sealed custody reports local policing never had clearance to see.
Which left him with two possibilities.
