Page 5 of 72 Hours

“And still on suspension, right?” I fired back. “Still on much-reduced pay and benefits, right?”

Her eyes grew darker and she flushed. “It was your choice, MacKay. We could’ve discussed the financial implications. But as far as I remember, you told me to shove the benefits up my arse and twist them hard. Next I knew, your address was ‘gone away’. And yes, you’re still on suspension, though that’s open to final review in a couple of weeks’ time.” She caught my angry gaze and held it fearlessly for a moment. Then gradually, her expression softened. “If you’d given me a chance, Tanner, I would have told you to stay and see it out. You just weren’t listening to me at the time.”

I didn’t want her pity. I had my own, right? But Judith had always been a bloody good friend to me.

“Tanner, I know it was tough for you back then, but this is what we have to do, now. And we need you to help. We can look at this as a partial return to active duty, if that’s what you want, and we’ll review the salary issue. If you can work with us here, that is.”

“You’re not the one I’m sharing my personal space with, here,” I grunted.

Simon laid a hand on my arm. It was a shock, being touched like that. He’d always enjoyed the friendship in the Team, the banter. The comradeship. Maybe I’d missed that, too, the past few months. But I didn’t think I was in any mood to debate it either way.

“Tanner, it’s obvious this is difficult for you. But like Judith says, we need your help! We can’t trust any other Departmental locations at the moment. Joe’s in hospital and Brad is isolated, out in the field with no support. Judith has junior staff with very justifiable fear of stepping outside their front doors and the Department watching our every move from the safety of their plush governmental offices, wondering and waiting to see if this brings us down. We must stop this, and fast. All the good work we’ve done in the Project Team so far—we must protect that, as well as ourselves.” I could hear the urgency in his voice. “Niall has nothing left and nowhere to go! He needs you, Tanner.”

He’s going to love that summary of his situation, of his life. The pressure from Simon’s warm hand was very unnerving. Once upon a long time ago, I’d been as committed to the job as he had. You hear that, Niall? Apparently you have nothing left! Except this....

Except me.

And so I turned back to face my new houseguest. Niall Sutherland. Man with the boxes, man with the need for my home.

Niall. The man I’d crossed the country to avoid; whose proximity promised nothing now except contempt; the man I once said I didn’t want to see again until hell proverbially froze over, let alone offer a mug of tea.

And he was staying in my home.

​​​Chapter 2 – Monday 06:30

The trailer park was quiet in the early morning. Well, quiet in that the only background noise was a mixture of barking dog, the occasional raised voice over breakfast coffee, muffled through the walls of adjacent trailers, and the melancholic turning over of a dying car battery. The usual. It was a small, out-of-the-way permanent site on the outskirts of Colchester, Essex, its residents a mix of travellers, rootless families, and people with no other place to go. No one got up around here to rush to work in the city.

The guys from the Team left with the same care and secrecy that they’d used to arrive. Cissy came over quickly, directing them back to the company car—a dull-coloured vehicle with its plates artfully obscured. It had been parked around the back of the gravel heap. I’d forgotten to warn her that was where some of the residents drew their scrap, utilising a random collection of vehicles that were abandoned or just carelessly parked. Anything left unattended for more than a few hours vanished or became unrecognisable by morning. I surreptitiously checked it still had all four wheels.

Greg was beside a nearby trailer and came running over to help shield Judith and Simon, presumably watching out for any sudden threat in this decidedly unregulated area. I laughed aloud when a large Rottweiler poked its head around the trailer after him, snapping aggressively. The kid staggered back in surprise, but it certainly put a spring in his step.

Simon was the last to leave me, but also the most eager. His pale colour had deteriorated to something closer to parchment. He was worrying about Brad, I knew it. We all knew it. Brad would feel the same, if the situation were reversed. It had been a bit of a joke when I first joined the Team, the way that the two of them seemed joined at the hip. Not physiologically, of course, but in the way that they understood each other without a load of chat, in the way that they cared for each other. They didn’t make much of an issue of it, keeping anything they shared outside work pretty discreet. But they weren’t making excuses, either. When I got to know what genuine guys they were, and after I had some outside-work experience of my own... well, it wasn’t such a joke then, was it? I envied them, to tell you the truth.

And so off went almost all of my visiting delegation, rolling quietly through the pot-holed back roads, returning to the motorway, civilisation, and the Department to report their Mission Nursemaid—or whatever they called it in memos that were probably never officially acknowledged—well and truly accomplished.

When I turned back from seeing them off, I found Niall hadn’t moved from the corner of my room. A narrow shaft of morning light sneaked through the broken blind, dissecting the shadow of his body. For a few long, silent moments, we both stared at some disturbed particles of dust that glittered within it. When they settled at last on the cushions of the couch, I cleared my throat. This was my place, after all.

“No one’s going to steal any of your stuff. You can leave it there and sit down at least. You make the place look untidier than it already is.” My voice sounded very brittle in the suddenly empty room. My gut was churning. I’d abandoned my tea a long time ago, and I couldn’t remember if I’d eaten anything since last night’s supper. The phone call had come from Judith less than two hours ago. It felt like weeks.

And—dammit! —I was still wondering where she’d found my cell number when I’d changed providers twice in the last three months, and both times under different names.

Niall’s sigh sounded like it was dragged out of him. He shifted on one foot, then the other, but he still didn’t sit down. “I feel the same way you do, if that’s any consolation to you,” he said at last, his voice thick with exhaustion and something more like anger. “I tried to find someone else, tried to convince them I’d be okay somewhere else. You know what Judith’s like, though.”

I didn’t answer that one. It was unnerving enough, having to listen to him. The voice was just as I remembered. Just the same as my late-night dreams, the nightmares’ mockery, jangling my nerves. Fuck. For the first time, I wished the others would come back. At least I could be distracted by other, less disturbing sounds. I wondered why basic training had never covered this particular scenario.

Niall looked like he was struggling with the conversation. I felt the wave of frustration from him as clearly as I read the clench of his fist. “Tanner, we have to cope with this, right? Just for the bare minimum of time. You need to keep a low profile too. We’ll have to sort out some compromise.”

Obviously “fuck off and leave me alone” wasn’t an option. Then I despised my sudden, childish aggression. My social skills had sadly lapsed. Perhaps I was becoming the loud-mouthed boor that many accused me of being in the past.

Perhaps—just at that moment—I couldn’t care less.

NIALL SAT DOWN AT LAST because even his cast-iron will couldn’t keep him up indefinitely. I drew the stool out from under the kitchen counter and dragged it into the living room, slumping down gracelessly, while he settled himself on the couch. He moved gingerly.

I felt a familiar buzz inside me as I watched his movements. Partly because my job had been to pay attention to the people around me at all times, and partly for other, more intimate reasons. He was nursing an injury to his left leg, probably the hamstring, and it looked like he had some hearing restriction in his left ear. That was apart from the external cuts and bruises. My appraisal of his condition was swift and instinctive, even as I hated myself for bothering.

“So how bad was it?”

He looked up quizzically, and for a moment my breath caught in my throat. It was the way his square jaw thrust up in a familiar, defiant move; the way his dark brown eyes widened as they met my focus. He didn’t ask me what I was talking about because he knew, of course. Damned smart, as always. “You want to know?”