“I want her found. I want them brought back,” Indie’s voice rumbled round the room like a boulder. “I want to bring the Viking in.”
The room was already quiet. Yet, that silence deepened. Icy in its depths.
“He’s exiled. I don’t want him back in this club. Ste’s funeral was an exception,” Barry the Blade grumbled, careful enough not to raise his voice. Not to challenge. But enough to make his opinion clear.
“Noted. I propose we hire him. We need intelligence. We need Jazz. He can get us both.”
No one breathed. Tension hung in the air like someone had just pulled the pin from a hand grenade.
“All in favour?” Indie carried on, ignoring the atmosphere.
For a moment, nobody moved. And then Fury raised his arm. Then the Twins. Then Magnet, until the only one left was Barry the Blade.
Nobody watched. No one shared glances, their eyes only on the table while the silent challenge now hung in the air. Indie’s eyes stayed on Baz, not hard, not soft. Just waiting as the seconds ticked away. I heard him exhale, his chest sinking, acceptance. Baz could have voted no. But the rest of the club knew what Indie wanted. The newer members didn’t truly understand the implication of bringing in the exiled member, even if he was working for us. But Barry the Blade, a Northern King original, remembered everything.
He nodded once. Agreement.
I knew it would come. It was the only way. But I exhaled with the rest of the club as well.
Chapter Seven
The air nipped at my cheeks as I stepped out through the sliding doors of A&E, and for a moment I stopped. The smokers and vapers were in their usual places, clouds forming around them as much from conversation as the contraptions and sticks of death they put between their lips. Even from this distance the smell always hit hard. A mix of memories, good and bad.
“Dr Mercer?” The man in the thick black jacket stepped from the hut at the front of the building.
The security guard greeted me for the third night as I stepped outside. The lights behind me caught in the reflective strips on his chest, theNHSsign on one side almost glowingin contrast where it sat over his left lapel. I nodded in acknowledgement.
“I’ll watch you to your car,” he mumbled, his voice low and thick.
“Thank you,” I started. “You know it’s not necessary. I can manage.”
“I know, Doc. But we’ve been instructed to escort you when it’s dark.”
The same response as last night, and the nights before that. I hadn’t reported the incident. Partly because I couldn’t face the paperwork. But also because something else had my attention.
The days after I saw Ryan had blurred together in a way I didn’t like. Nothing dramatic happened. No mistakes. No complaints. I didn’t miss a diagnosis or forget a drug chart. I turned up on time, drank bad coffee, did my job. On paper, everything was fine. But my concentration frayed at the edges.
I kept thinking of the way he’d said my name. Not Sophie. Not Doctor. Grey. Like it still belonged to me. Like it hadn’t been buried under a decade of rotas and responsibility and learning how to stand very still while everything inside you shook.
“Dr Mercer?” The voice beside me came again, piercing through the whirl of emotions and memories that cycled incessantly through my brain.
“I… I’m just over here,” I pointed behind him. To the back of the car park and the last remaining space I’d squeezed into, taking half a hedge with me.
I was on late shifts all week. Officially, anyway. The rota had shifted. A swap, a favour owed, a quiet reshuffle thathappens all the time in A&E. It meant I finished just before eleven instead of drifting out sometime after midnight. And that was what I’d told myself when I didn’t see him again.
After thirteen years, seeing him, a different him, had rattled me. Why I thought he’d turn up here again, I had no idea. Some part of my brain wanted that moment the other night to mean something. Not just coincidence. Another part of me wanted answers. Thirteen years ago, he’d vanished. I’d waited for him for hours, watching out of my bedroom window, searching for the lop-sided headlights of his little motorbike coming down my street. But that night he never came. And I never heard from him again. The man walking beside me slowed. My car just a few strides in front of us.
“Thank you,” I said automatically, gazing around and realising I’d had no recollection of the last few footsteps.
He waited while I took my keys out of my backpack. Stood quietly as I pressed the button on the fob and the car lights flashed, deep orange falling amongst the shadows. Waited, as the engine started and the headlights lit up the tarmac in front of me.
My eyes searched the billowing darkness, tracking any movement, scouring for anyone hidden in the night. The security guard stood still, not moving until I’d pulled away, his fluorescent strips pink in my taillights. I tracked the entrance doors as I drove. The security desk. The glass entrance. The blur of movement beyond the lights. Every night, the same flicker of anticipation followed by the same hollow drop.
He wasn’t there.
*****
The trees standing sentry on either side of the road were still bare. Tiny green buds swelling on skeletal branches. Not enough to brighten the dark brown of the bark. But enough that the first sign of better weather was on the way. It had drizzled this morning. Again. A fine mist coated the road, glistening on top of parked cars that hadn’t moved for days.
