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He’d already fallen in too deep.
Instead, he stood frozen beside his car and let fear win.
Chapter eighteen
Breaking Point
Jake slammed the van door hard enough to rattle the mirrors.
Then he punched the wheel.
“Fuck’s sake.”
Fine.
Whatever.
Didn’t matter.
He shoved the key in the ignition and got the hell out of the scrap yard.
So what if he’d just risked not only himself, but Raff too. Raff, who had a newborn at home and enough money stress to drown in already. So what if he’d practically handed Harrison evidence with his own fingerprints all over it. So what if he’d stood in thirty-degree heat and all but told the man he was halfway to…whatever the living fuck he was and got absolutely fucking nothing back.
Fine.
Least now he knew where he stood.
Or didn’t.
The roads around the industrial estate shimmered beneath the heat haze as he drove back to the warehouse site, one arm hanging out the window because the van’s air conditioning had packed up somewhere around 2014.
The refurbishment was now four storeys of scaffolding, boards and ladders zig-zagging upward around faded brickwork and shattered old windows waiting to be reglazed. Day four meant rebuild. New joists where the old structure had sagged. Replacing damaged ply decking. Refitting breathable membrane and preparing sections for fresh lead flashing around the upper vents and drainage channels.
Hard work.
Miserable work in this weather.
Jake pulled onto the hardstanding beside stacks of timber, insulation boards, and pallets of rolled membrane. Nail guns cracked overhead somewhere up on the roofline while radios blasted distorted rock music between shouted insults and scaffold poles clanging together. He was late. Properly late. He should have been here at seven, it was now nine. Levenson would have his bollocks for it too, especially with deadlines breathing down everyone’s necks. Though Jake wasn’t sure he cared enough right then to survive the lecture politely.
Fuck, maybe he’d fucked this job for Harrison and all.
That thought sat ugly in his chest as he shoved the van door open and climbed out.
“Whitton!” Roman yelled from the scaffolding above. “Nice of you t’join us, princess!”
A chorus of jeers followed.
Jake lifted two fingers. But when he reached for his harness and tool belt from the back of the van, he noticed Levenson down near the temporary site office talking to someone beside a forklift loaded with steel lengths and boxed fittings. Which probably saved Jake from getting an immediate bollocking from the real boss. Then Levenson moved and Jake saw the bloke he’d been talking to.
Andy fucking Mitchell.
He stood beside the forklift in faded overalls and a high-vis hanging open over his stomach. Thirteen years had added weight around his middle on his otherwise stick-thin body, and deepened the creases around his eyes, but he looked much the same as when Jake had last faced him. Thin grey hair. Permanent stubble. The sort of washed-out face Jake could pick out of a crowd from a hundred yards away because he’d spent years wanting to put his fist through it.
Levenson scribbled something onto the paperwork while Andy nodded along absently beside the forklift. Then Andy looked up. Saw Jake across the site. Jake wouldn’t have called it a smile. Andy Mitchell had become far too careful for smiles around him over the years. Too aware of how quickly things between them could turn ugly. Still, there was something not quite right there either. Not for a bloke who should actively be running in the opposite direction.
The two of them had spent years trapped in the same miserable orbit. Jake had gone to prison for nearly beating Andy to death after Robyn vanished, convinced the bloke had done something to her. And Andy, odd, obsessive Andy, had spent years collecting clippings and maps and scraps about her disappearance as if he’d loved her in his own warped way.
Then there was the folder.
