Mickey.
Benito’s heart skipped a beat. They’d spoken on the phone three times since their brittle parting at the motorway caff, and each time, Mickey had been all business while Benito had gripped his phone so tight he was surprised the screen was still intact. They’d talked about Rosetta’s payment plan, her mental health, and processing the Universal Credit application. Well, Mickey talked. Benito mainly listened while his heart thumped and his palms sweated. Seriously, the dude had a voice that set Benito on fire and eroded his brain to mush. It had taken him until the very end of the third call to tell Mickey he’d made the first payment on Rosetta’s arrears.
“Let me guess, cash, right?”
Benito flinched at the edge in Mickey’s deep voice. “No. I used my debit card like a good boy. Like you fucking told me to.”
“You don’t have to do what I say.”
True, but Benito had known long before he’d met Mickey that paying Rosetta’s bills with street money was a fool’s game. If he hadn’t, her and Gianna would have lived like queens. Until you fucked everything up. And then what? She’d have been high and dry anyway.
It wasn’t a new realisation, but it sat grimly in Benito’s heart all the same. The only way he could’ve prevented this from happening would’ve been to have lived a different life altogether. One where he’d stayed away from the street and worked harder to be a better man.
A better brother.
A better son.
A better anonymous face to come across in a sultry club.
But then, perhaps if Benito had lived a different life, he’d never have set foot in Freefall, and he wouldn’t be spending his days now living for the moments Mickey’s name lit up his phone screen.
Up ahead, the people carrier eased off the gas for a T-junction that branched onto a busier road. Benito slowed too, holding back until it was impossible to do so without giving himself away. He drew within three car lengths of the Zafira and held his breath, waiting for the doors to open and the four occupants to bear down on him. Or for them to simply drive on, taking him for an innocent driver who just happened to be heading the same way in the dead of night.
The Zafira stopped at the junction. Brake lights shut off and the passenger door opened.
Long legs breached the doorway. Benito reached for the metal cosh hidden beneath his seat. It was taped to stop it rolling under the pedals. He fumbled to free it, adrenaline burning his veins, his lungs, and roaring in his ears. This was it. He was going into battle for five-grand worth of coke on a fucking main road.
Or he was going to die. There were no other options.
The tall figure burst out of the Zafira. Dressed in black, with a mask over his face, Benito couldn’t tell if it was someone he knew. And it didn’t matter. Benito had to take him down, and the next man, and the next, if he stood any chance of survival.
The cosh dropped free. Benito snatched it and yanked the handbrake up on the Corsa. He reached for the door handle, but before his fingers closed around it, a blinding flash of light swept the area. Blue light. And then sirens, loud and obnoxious.
Unmarked police cars swarmed the junction and the road in front of Benito. A black BMW cut him off from the Zafira and his would-be assailant. Bodies poured from the police vehicles, shouting and holding up tasers, all pointed in the direction of the Zafira.
Shouted warnings filled the air, rattling Benito’s bones. For a heart-stopping moment, he was frozen, consumed by the sight of three more men stepping from the people carrier, hands in the air. Then it sunk in that no one had looked his way yet. The feds were focused on the Zafira. It’s like I’m not here.
Stomach in his throat, Benito took his chance. He killed his lights, threw the Corsa into a three-point turn, and sped away, praying the feds had no helicopters covering their sting as he floored the accelerator.
With gritted teeth, he hit the country lane, the old Corsa shuddering in protest. The road seemed narrower than before, the bends tighter. He gritted his teeth as gravel sprayed behind him and worn tyres skidded, but the darkness held.
No one followed.
Benito felt sick. He breathed hard through his nose as the Corsa ate the miles up, taking him back to the abandoned dog food factory where he’d left his SUV.
He dumped the Corsa two miles away and hiked across fields to reach the derelict factory. A nearby storm drain gave a resting place for the cosh and his muddy clothes, and he dressed under the misty sky, cold biting into his skin.
Shivering, he slid into the SUV and activated the heated seats. He eased away from the factory site and drove to the main road. By the time he joined the slip road, the car was toasty warm, but the trembling didn’t fade. Adrenaline turned to fear, an agitation he couldn’t shake, and he pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Fuck!”
His own voice startled him. He didn’t shout much. Had never seen the point. But recent months had turned his world upside down, and as he glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught sight of his wild gaze, he didn’t recognise himself.
Go home. Take a shower. Get some sleep. But the thought of being alone made him shake harder. Don’t puke. Don’t puke. Another thing he hadn’t done since childhood that had somehow become his body’s favourite coping mechanism.
Fuck my life.
Blindly, Benito drove on, lost in the battle to keep fucking breathing. The miles disappeared and the roads became more familiar, but he wasn’t anywhere close to home.
Freefall appeared up ahead, and he drove into the car park with little conscious thought until he killed the engine.
Silence enveloped him, save his thumping heart. The fuck are you doing?
No answer was forthcoming, and he got out of his car, internally screaming at himself to stop. But he kept moving. Signed into the club and made his way to the locker room. He took a shower, then redressed in the clean clothes he’d thrown on outside the abandoned factory—dark jeans and a grey tee beneath a black bomber jacket that had cost more than his monthly car payments.
He was overdressed. Most of the men he passed on his way to the bar were in towels, or less, but Benito had never cared much for sitting around naked, waiting on a stranger. And he never hooked up in the bar.
I wonder if—
He ground his teeth, wiping all thoughts of Mickey before they could take hold. Whatever fucked-up setting his autopilot was stuck on, he already knew he wouldn’t hook up. That he couldn’t. Whatever he might’ve had with Mickey was a dead end, but Benito wasn’t ready for another man’s hands to touch his skin. Another man’s kiss. Damn, he didn’t know if he’d ever be ready for that.
Fuck, I just need a drink.
A quiet hour in a safe space.
Benito neared the bar. At 2.00 am it was quiet, only a lone figure at the opposite end, slumped over a glass while the bartender patted his shoulder. His broad, strong shoulder encased in a smart white shirt that clung to his leanly muscled frame.
Stop. You’re fucking seeing things. He had to be.
There was no way he’d walked into a sex club in the middle of the night to find the one face he needed to forget.
12
Mickey felt him before he saw him. But like everything that day, it didn’t seem real. The tingling on the back of his neck felt like a rash, and the flutter in his chest added a scratchy new layer to the anxiety he couldn’t escape.