Page 56 of Drift

Jan hung up and eventually Raif made his way over the carpark. The door opened a moment later, and his Merc shifted under Raif’s all-muscle weight.

“No Gray? No Jack?” Ray looked behind into the backseat. “No Ray and his munchkins hiding in the back trying to pike Jack from behindinthe behind?”

Jan stayed so quiet on hearing that. “How’s Chase?”

Raif gave a sniff. “Still the same. Still lost to his coma. But…” He shook his head. “I get the feeling you’re not here to talk about Chase and Ash, right?”

Jan looked at him. “You’re bound by client confidentiality, right?” he said eventually.

Raif tilted his look Jan’s way. “Is that what you need to be? A confidential client of mine?”

Jan nodded. “All expenses covered plus your normal hourly rate. But I only need information. Nothing more. No contact, no disturbing the waters.”

Raif folded his arms as he eased back into his seat. “I have to ask: does this intel go against any laws?”

Jan looked his way sharply. “What? No. Just intel on whether a kid is out there, nothing more.”

“Good, because I’d have taken the walk if it was. Ex-MI6 here: I work within the law, not around it.”

Jan nodded.

“So give me a name, give me a reason.”

Jan walked Raif through it. “Gray said you’d be the best one to make the call and get Jude’s name out on the street, find out if he’s out there. No contact.”

Raif glanced hard at Jan.

“Fuck. You’re kidding me?Martinhas a kid?”

As he sat working, Gray flicked a look at the time on his laptop. Over thirty minutes it had taken for Jack to ease away from the corner and sit with his back pressed into it. Head down in the arms across his knees, it had taken him another thirty minutesto take a drink of water from the bottle Gray had placed at his side.

A look at the Polaroid never came, neither did a move to shift it back into alignment, but it felt like the avoidance was deliberate, stubborn.

Antibacterial handwash stood watch close by, but that stayed purely a guard to the quiet as well.

Jack kept his headphones on, the playlist halfway through it second run, and occasionally, every now and again, a twist of head to the side would come Gray’s way, as if to check he was still there. Even that was in question.

Gray briefly closed his eyes.

Now after checking to make sure Jan was on his way back home, it touched two hours, and as Jack eased to his feet, Gray closed his laptop and went over. He kept his body in close, letting Jack know he wasn’t to leave the corner until he’d found his voice, but also to let him know there’d be no repercussions, no anger, just Gray’s stay with him.

No shift in body came to push him or his touch away, and after a moment, Jack went to speak, then tightened his jaw and looked away.

Gray didn’t rush him. He gave him time, space….

“I don’t know how I feel about you and Martin touching.”

Jealousy wasn’t Jack. He simply repeated a line he seemed to have been repeating over and over since he’d sat on the bench after losing Martin, and that killed Gray how it had rebounded around and around his head without him being able to sort it.

“But it….” Jack frowned. “It’s not because you twotouched.” He looked his way, seemed to try and order the sock drawer inside his head. “It’s because heallowedyou in to touch.”

Gray returned the frown, and Jack shivered with it.

“I sat on the bench after I lost him, and it felt like my skin had been stripped raw, leaving me open to the dirt and grime that digs too deep to get at and scrub clean. But I thought it was because I’d lost him. So after each failed therapy session, change in meds, blood tests… sticking to them and it still not working, I pushed to try and get him back to stop the crawling under my skin. And I swear, wherever I went, whether it was back to the factory or sitting outside my mother’s home, I handled it. I wouldn’t have taken the walk there if I thought I couldn’t handle it, but all of Halliday’s care… you… Jan. Seems I’m in a good place with you all. Martin never once turned his head my way.”

Gray eased a touch under Jack’s T-shirt at his side, stroking lightly at the skin. Fuck. That’s where he’d been walking to… down hell’s memory lane and all its triggers.

“But security….” So much anger crept in Jack’s look. “Gray, you’re my greatest fucking threat at times, and Martin? He let you get close. He let youandbloody Cutter close through Joanna, and I had no fucking clue.”

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