Page 68 of Drift

He circled a street on the map.

“I got nothing for roughly two weeks, and I mean absolutely nothing.” Raif gave a hard sigh. “Then on my drive back to the MC psych unit, I caught a glimpse of this young lass.”

He thumbed through to a snapshot of a pretty young teenager, huddled back into the shadow of a building. Her sharp turn of head towards a camera unsettled her tight ponytail, and from under her hood, red hair was caught in a full slipstream of blurred movement as a strand graced the Witch necklace on an all-too delicate throat.

Gray took the phone off him. “She shadowed you?”

“She shadowed me on foot whilst I drove a stolen Merc.”

“She followed you on foot… from Newham?” Gray frowned. “How?”

“Feeder,” mumbled Raif. “A damn good one to build-run through London.” He looked Gray’s way when it didn’t seem to register. “You ever watchedTop Gear?”

Gray gave a rough sigh, one that said…fucking mechanic, and Raif almost smiled. Yeah… Jack. They all knewTop Gear. Raif took his phone back and quickly thumbed through YouTube and brought up one particular clip. “They did an episode years ago, one where they got their top driver, Stig, to race a street runner like this through the streets of London, see who got to the destination faster.”

Raif pressed play.

The driver spun some serious tyre smoke as the clock hit Start, and his shift into gear from a London backstreet came just as hard.

The young man stood beside him, he shifted in the same instance, but he hit the first building, going up and over.

Raif let the clip play out: the skilled slips and turns of the driver through London… the pure skill behind the lad over building jumping found in a pure parkour speed run.

Gray thumbed to the end.

As the car pulled up, the lad sent him a salute. He’d been sitting there for a while, five minutes to be precise, or so the timer called out.

“Impressive,” mumbled Gray.

“I was tied down by the same road restraints as the driver inTop Gear,” Raif said as he thumbed away the clip. “The usual over traffic lights, roadworks, speed limits… all that has to be taken into account with both. But the runner? Going high and fast over the city brick-and-mortar skyline? Only his skill and sheer balls slow him down. These kids are fast and bloody fearless.”

“Feeder.” Gray said quietly, his look back on the girl. “You said Feeder with the girl not Runner here.”

Yeah, he had. Raif sent the image of the girl over to Gray for his records. “I asked around, using the image here, and the comeback tallied with my own instincts. Feeders…” He screwed his face. “They’re like bloody sewer rats, only working from on high instead of underground: always in packs, always able to get into anywhere, anything, especially pockets as you walk by on the pathway. Feeders take the stolen goods in order to get them off the street as soon as possible, hence the term: feeder. So talent like hers?” He tapped the phone. “It’s eaten up.”

Raif slipped his phone away and glanced around, not really seeing anything now. “She caught me back on the way to see Ash and Lucy at the MC psych unit. That… that’s getting too personal. I detoured, and let her pick me up on a few times after that to test her skill and endurance out.”

“She didn’t back down.”

Raif shook his head. “I set up a half-way house, neutral ground for both of us, and she followed me back there.”

Gray watched him for a moment. “But she didn’t make contact?”

“No. Everything went quiet.”

Gray cocked a brow. “Oh… she fed it back to someone?”

Raif nodded and wiped another hand over his face.

“What’s got you scared, Raif?” Gray asked quietly. “The streets, particularly at night, they’re your home. Why do these kids bother you?”

Yeah, he was scared, and it was why Gray got the call today. He thumbed back through for theTop Gearclip and kept it paused on the final salute of the lad who’d won the race. “You see when this run took place?”

Gray looked it over. “During the daytime.”

Raif flicked him a look. “She did hers at night, with me.”

Nothing came from Gray’s look, but it was a different street level to where his head usually walked, a different street knowledge. And this one here mostly dealt with kids, which wasn’t Gray’s kill-switch level. He’d seen that over Lucy. Over Light.

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