Page 97 of Natural-Born Cullers

Jack tried a smile. Failed. He left him there and pulled out his phone. As Ray tapped something on his own, one eye Jack’s way, Jack thumbed something into the notes on his, then set a timer for every fifteen minutes as he made it to the front door.

The walk back around to the summerhouse was longer this way, but the tent marker was still visible in the morning rain that had settled on the green. He kept focus on that, kept a hold on his phone, and like the stones around Gray’s feet as he got out of his Merc in the photo, Jack counted each and every footstep down to the summerhouse….

“Jack.” The angry shout came back from behind, from Ray, and as hurried footsteps traced his, Jack shivered, just the once, maybe twice….

Martin stopped and shook away the fading trace of someone walking over his grave, then glanced around the green and rested on the summerhouse.

Usually someone always walked by his side, and the loss of that was startling. That numbness paralysed, but it echoed from something core-deep, and it shook him just as much.

The first taste of Jack was astoundingly… off.

“Fucking seriously, Harrison?This is why we always fall out.”

A grip came to his arm, and Martin looked down at the phone he held. “I have to tell you to move that, Rachel, we have problems we won’t come back from,” he said flatly.

A hard sigh came as Ray removed his hold. “You know, I’m thinking you really should have stayed out of the way for a while, Mart.”

“Yeah well.” Martin gave a sniff as an alarm cut in from the phone. “Both you and Gray need to learn life isn’t always about whatyouthink and want.” Annoyed, he tried to find a way to switch the alarm off, then caught the message sitting there in the notes.

“Fuck.” He wiped a hand over his face as he read Jack’s note.

“Look, asshole—”

“Shut it, Rosie.” Martin opened a fresh note and thumbed something under Jack’s note. After a moment, a hard sigh, he handed it over to Ray for him to read the second one he’d written.

Ray eyed the phone for a moment, not taking it.

“I’m at the bottom of Gray’s best-friend list until he pulls his head out of his ass,” Martin said flatly. “So either you take this message to him, or I set fire to the summerhouse and do it by smoke signal, we clear?”

Ray took the phone off him with a frown, then read the message Martin had written. After a moment, he took a screenshot of it, then no doubt sent it over to his phone before flicking a look up at Martin.

“Do yourself a favour,” Ray called over his shoulder as he tossed his phone back at him. “Get back into the manor for Jack’s sake, east wing side. Do what you were bloody made for: look after him.”

Martin tilted his ear back to Ray, then looked back down at the first message off Jack.

It didn’t look for a reply, but none was needed.

Fix this for them if you can.

I can’t.

Not anymore.

Chapter 28

Schooled

Gray stood atthe office window, half of his focus behind him, on Simon and his work on his laptop to try and locate Light, and half on the phone in his hand. Light hadn’t been stupid this time. He’d long since learned about covering his activity when it came to someone tracking his whereabouts. Losing the GPS tracking on Light when he’d dumped the laptop at Seth’s, Simon’s look over the files saw Light had also only accessed Myers and Seth’s documents, not the blank ones over Gray’s remaining two cullers. They really had no clue where he’d go now. But Jack….

Fuck. Gray briefly closed his eyes.

Jan stood watchman at the door, and his exhaustion rested back towards the hall. He refused to take the weight off head and heart by taking a seat. Too much anger and concern came with it, but so too did how he stood there, not allowing anyone in, but not allowing Gray out either.

Gray tried to calm adrenaline levels, but failed so badly.

Jack…. Fuck.

Gray stared down at his phone, not knowing what to write, because all that came out was—

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