Page 77 of Crave

A silhouette moved. Cutting out of the warehouse, covered in shadow. Then they turned and revealed a face I could pick out of a fucking lineup. A kid walking like a man trying to look calm: shoulders square, hands in pockets, vape clutched in his grip like a prop. He moved with a nervous energy I could smell. My stomach turned over. That fucking kid had no idea how small he looked in a yard like this. A lamb trying to wear a wolf’s shadow.

My muscles tightened.

Darren.

Fuck’s sake.

What the fuck was Darren doing here?

He reached the gate, paused for a bit, then climbed up onto the low wall and stepped through the gap in the fence. He walked towards the shutter without looking up, head down as if practicing not-to-see. A van door thudded; someone laughed inside.

“Fuck.” I fished out my phone from my back pocket, the one I used for friends and family, and texted Keeley.

Where’s Darren?

Her reply came quick. College, y?

I tucked the phone away, then slipped out of the car, closing the door softly because noise travels like gossip here.

The cold hit me full force. Rain had started again, a thin sheet soaking through cotton and meaning business. I moved low, keeping the short wall between me and the warehouse, the pallets my cover. I stayed out of the strip light, only a shadow among shadows. Darren had stopped by the shutter, glancing at his phone, then at the vans. He took a drag off his vape and blew it out, trying for cool and missing by a mile. The way his shoulders twitched told me he knew he shouldn’t be here. So I crossed the yard, quick and silent, the ground sucking at my boots as if it wanted me to stay here. But I reached him and caught a fistful of his hood, hauling him sideways into the alley between the warehouse and a stack of blue pallets.

“Ow — fuck!” His head cracked against the brick. Good. Maybe it’d knock some sense in.

I slapped him. Proper. “You at college, yeah?” I hit him again. “That’s for lying to my sister.” Then again. “That’s for lying to my niece.” I stepped close, breath hot in his ear. “What you get for lying to me depends on the next words outta your mouth.”

Darren’s lips trembled. He nodded.

“Why are you here?”

“They told me to come.” He practically squeaked as he rushed to get it all out. “Said if I helped it’d sort things. Said you were the reason I was in shit. Said they’d come for Maisie if I didn’t. I couldn’t— you took that piece from me, Razor!”

I let him go and stepped back, hearing how ridiculous it sounded even as it came out. “You stupid prick. Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Couldn’t find you, could I?” He tried a look, the one he’d learnt for bargaining. “They said they’d give me a job, yeah? Clear my debt. Get me a place. For me and Kee.”

I hit him again, then hauled him close by the hoodie until his face was inches from mine. “You really that thick? You think Ghost gives out jobs? You think they hand out houses after they stab their kin for you? Do you know what you just offered on a plate? Do you know what they’ll do to her if you mess up and I’m not around?”

Darren’s mouth opened, closed.

I answered for him. “They’ll do you too.”

He swallowed hard, as if the truth had lodged somewhere it couldn’t come back from. He looked smaller than the first time I’d seen him piss his pants when I’d had to tell him Keeley was pregnant. That made it all worse. I hated this life. This place. How it dragged everyone down, even the ones who weren’t built for it. Darren wasn’t blameless, but he hadn’t gone looking for this.

I was the one who brought it to his door.

“Fuck’s sake.” I scrubbed a hand over my buzzcut, stared at the wet concrete, then at him. “How many?”

He blinked. “What?”

“How many inside?”

“Five.”

Those odds weren’t in my favour. Panic tried to climb in my throat, but I pushed it down to crunch the numbers quick. Not the ones solved in lecture halls, but the arithmetic of streets and scars. A plan slid into place: draw them out, isolate one, take him quiet, keep the noise low, move fast.

Darren swallowed. “They want to take you down.”

“I know.” I took a breath, forcing the panic into order.