Page 126 of Too Close To Home

“I have a few questions for you as well. Could I stop by your flat later?” Harrison pulled out a notebook and flipped it open. “If you’d be so kind as to let me have your address.”

“I’ll be at work.”

Jake glanced over his shoulder at him. “You don’t work Mondays.”

Brodie shrugged. “Extra shift. We’re down a barmaid, remember?”

Jake winced. Course. Emily. And Claire still hadn’t come back since the night Emily vanished. Brodie was clearly picking up the fallout.

“I’ll stop by the pub then,” Harrison said.

Brodie nodded, but before he turned away, he trailed his gaze slowly up and down Harrison’s frame. Deliberate. Assessing. Almost mocking. The way he would in a nightclub when another bloke was muscling in on his territory. Then he descended the stairs, the metal steps ringing hollow as he disappeared into the alley below.

“What d’you want to talk to Brodie for?” Jake fought the key into the rusty lock. “Pretty sure that ain’t his surname, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“He gives fake names sometimes.” Jake shouldered the door open.

“Why?”

Jake glanced back at him. “You ever been out?”

Harrison said nothing.

Jake snorted.

Course he hadn’t. Or not out out. Not the sort of nights Jake knew. Dark corners. Back rooms. Someone else’s flat. Names exchanged because it was polite rather than because he intended to remember it.

“Makes things easier.”

“For what?”

Jake stopped in the doorway and looked at him. “Are you actually this innocent, or are you taking the piss?”

Harrison breathed a smile. “Wouldn’t that normally involve giving you a different first name?”

Jake leaned back against the open door. “Depends how much you don’t want someone finding you afterwards.”

“After what?”

Now Harrison was definitely fucking with him.

Jake let his gaze travel slowly over him. Coat. Shirt. Tie. That maddeningly composed face. There was something different about him tonight. Jake couldn’t put his finger on it, but he could feel it. Harrison wasn’t retreating. Wasn’t throwing up one of those careful professional walls the second things strayed somewhere personal. He was standing there waiting.

Almost daring him.

Fine.

Jake dropped his voice and gave him exactly what he’d asked for. “After you fuck them.”

No grin. No joke to soften it. He let the words sit between them while he looked Harrison straight in the eye.

Harrison drew a breath.

Jake fucking saw that. The tiny shift beneath all that control before Harrison got hold of it again.

“What’s his real name then?” Harrison asked.