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And Jake smiled back.

Yeah…properly screwed alright.

Chapter twenty-Four

The Deep End

The weeks that followed felt strangely disconnected from everything that had come before. Maybe Jake had expected surviving the crawl space to feel dramatic. Instead, it mostly involved coughing up dust, attending medical appointments, and enduring an endless parade of people asking if he’d learned his lesson.

Course he hadn’t.

Teddy was the most offended by the entire thing.

Apparently, being trapped inside a condemned building ranked somewhere between “idiotic” and “the stupidest thing anyone had ever done.” Jake had tried to point out that it was technically Roman who’d trapped him, but Teddy remained unconvinced. Perhaps he just preferred the version where his uncle hadn’t nearly been murdered and was simply a prat.

The investigation, however, moved quickly.

Roman lasted less than two days before firearms officers found him hiding in a caravan park outside Scarborough. Harrison never told Jake exactly how that arrest went down, but judging by Calder’s unusually cheerful mood for the rest of the week, it had apparently been memorable. Once Roman was in custody, the rest started to unravel. Not because Roman confessed. Because people suddenly realised they could save their own skin.

Davo Garfield talked first, hoping his cooperation might count in his favour when it came to his own role in concealing evidence and disposing of Lauren’s vehicle. Then his mechanics started talking. Then several of Levenson’s old crew had been tracked down and agreed to make statements. One conversation led to another, and before long, years of rumours, favours and secrets began spilling out into interview rooms across North Yorkshire.

Piece by piece, the picture became clearer.

Apparently, Roman had found Lauren through a network operating around private bookings and sex parties. The stitched black heart wasn’t simply a tattoo. It was a marker. A way of identifying those considered suitable for more exclusive clients. Women and men who could be sent to private parties, expected to be discreet and, more importantly, expected not to cause problems when what was being asked went beyond the original booking.

Exactly who had given Roman Lauren’s details was one thing the bastard still refused to tell them.

But Lauren had come to Hartswick believing she was meeting a private client. Instead, she’d come dangerously close to a world where money, influence and silence mattered considerably more than the women being brought into it.

Roman Levenson had been desperate for access to that world. He had money, but not enough of it. Connections, but not the right ones. The private parties gave him a way in: wealthy, influential men behind closed doors, and women like Lauren part of the currency required to earn an invitation.

Except Lauren hadn’t been as compliant as the little black heart had apparently promised.

She’d realised something was wrong.

So she ran.

Or tried to.

What happened afterwards would be argued over by barristers for months, but the broad outline never changed. Lauren fought back. Roman lost control. Violence escalated. And by the time he realised what he’d done, she was dead.

The river was supposed to wash the evidence away.

It hadn’t.

The scrapyard was supposed to destroy her car.

It hadn’t.

And all the people who’d helped Roman cover his tracks eventually discovered that murder investigations had a habit of outlasting loyalty.

The arrests made regional news. Roman was charged with Lauren Pike’s murder, along with the attempted murder and false imprisonment of Jake. Levenson senior was arrested too, although Harrison was still untangling exactly how much he’d known and when he’d known it. Every new statement seemed to uncover another lie buried beneath the last.

What did seem clear was that Roman hadn’t gone to Unit Twelve intending to kill Jake. He’d wanted to find out what Jake knew, frighten him into backing off, and stop him digging any further. Then Jake had pushed. Roman had said too much. And once Jake understood what that meant for Lauren, intimidation had become something else entirely.

The fall through the hatch might not have been planned. But locking Jake beneath it and leaving him there certainly had been. Apparently Roman Levenson had never learned what to do when someone told him no.

Davo wasn’t doing much better, either.