Jay gave Sebastian the address of a hotel in Nine Elms, on the riverfront. Paul let them off further down the street, and Sebastian led the twins the rest of the way. Aaron let out a low whistle of appreciation—Hunter echoing the sentiment with a softer noise of astonishment—as they approached their destination: a towering, sharply angular pair of skyscrapers.
“Quiet,” Sebastian warned them, as he led the way through the front doors. It was late enough at night that there wasn’t much of a crowd in the lobby, and Sebastian ushered the twins to the lifts as unobtrusively as he could.
The moment the lift doors closed, Aaron nearly shouted, “Yo, that was sick!”
“Like a superhero,” Hunter agreed, awed.
“Was you in the army?” Aaron asked. “Delta Force or some shit like that?”
“Delta Force is American,” Sebastian replied wearily. Then, against his better judgement, he added, “I was SAS.”
“No way? Like on the telly and that?”
Sebastian groaned and rubbed his eyes.
“Are all them scars from fighting terrorists?”
“Can you do that thing where you swing down a rope and bust through the window?”
“You got a gun?”
“Did you murk Bin Laden?”
“No,” Sebastian sighed.
“But you’ve killed people, yeah?”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Do you have any idea what a cliche that question is?”
“What’s your name, anyway?” Aaron asked.
“Sebastian.”
“You got a last name?” he needled, insistent.
“Yes.”
The lift, finally, arrived at one of the middle floors. Sebastian herded the boys out into the corridor, leading the way to the room number Jay had sent him.
He knocked, quietly; moments later, the door opened to reveal Jay standing on the other side. “Come on,” he said, ushering them inside.
The room was one of the hotel’s smaller, cheaper options, which still put it at nearly a thousand pounds a night. Two twin beds with pristine, neatly-tucked white sheets occupied most of the space, and floor-to-ceiling windows looked out across the river.
Aaron and Hunter hovered at the centre of the room, huddled in on themselves as if afraid to touch anything.
Sebastian leaned in close to Jay. “You’re sure this is a good idea?”
“Vaughan will be searching all the shit hotels and boltholes in the city,” Jay replied. “He won’t look for these two in a place like this.”
Sebastian had to concede the point; this was the sort of hotel where politicians brought their mistresses and visiting executives met the call girls they’d hired. The staff here were effectively blind, deaf, and very forgetful.
“All right,” Jay said, turning to Aaron and Hunter. “You two are going to stay in this room until we get back. No exceptions, no excuses. If you get hungry, order room service and tell them to charge it to the card on file.”
“You’re leaving?” Aaron asked; both he and Hunter looked to Sebastian with plaintive expressions.
“Yes.” Jay pulled a burner phone from his pocket and set it on the dresser. “My number’s in here. If there’s an emergency, call me on this phone. Do not use the room phone. Understand?”
In unison, both twins nodded.
By the time Sebastian was in a cab on the way back to his flat, the endorphins from the fight had worn off and his shoulder had really started to hurt. He shifted in his seat, struggling in vain to find a position that eased the ache.
Jay, sitting next to him, shot him a worried look. Sebastian offered him a quick smile of reassurance.
The cab eventually rolled to a stop outside Sebastian’s flat; he paid the driver, and Jay followed as he climbed out.
“All right,” Jay said, as soon as they were inside the flat. “Let’s see.”
Sebastian knew better than to argue. He shrugged out of his coat, hissing in pain as the motion jostled his shoulder, then tugged his shirt off over his head. A massive bruise had already started to form where the muscle in his neck met the joint of his shoulder.
Jay made a low noise of concern and reached out, carefully resting his hand on Sebastian’s arm.
“Vaughan got me with his baton.” Sebastian braced himself, then reached across to prod gently along his collarbone, confirming it wasn’t broken or cracked. He rolled his shoulder; it hurt, but it was a blunt, deep ache and not the shattered-glass feeling of something broken or torn. “It’s fine. Just need some ice and some drugs.”
Sebastian had lucked out—and judging by the look on Jay’s face, he knew that too. If the baton had hit him over the head, he’d probably be in hospital tonight. Or the morgue.
Jay let out a soft breath and released Sebastian’s arm, sidling around him into the bedroom to retrieve his stash of painkillers.
Sebastian made his way down to the far end of the flat, into the kitchen. There was a half-empty bag of peas in his freezer that mostly served as an ice pack these days; it’d been thawed and re-frozen so many times he wasn’t even sure they were edible anymore. He wrapped the bag in a tea towel, then pressed it gingerly to his shoulder, gritting his teeth at the shock of cold against bruised skin.
Jay reappeared, holding a box. He handed it to Sebastian, fetching a glass from the cabinet and filling it with water as Sebastian wrestled one-handed with the painkillers, popping two tablets from their blister packs. He tossed them into his mouth and took the water from Jay with a grateful nod, washing the pills down in a few long gulps.
Then he made his way back into the sitting room and slumped onto the sofa, easing back into the cushions with a low groan. It’d be a while before he could sleep; fighting always left him wired and jittery.
Jay dropped down next to him, resting his head on Sebastian’s uninjured shoulder. Sebastian twisted gingerly to brush a kiss across the top of his head. Jay rested a hand on Sebastian’s thigh, toying with a loose thread on his jeans.
After a few quiet minutes had passed, he said, “The boys seem quite attached to you.”
Sebastian groaned. “Little fucking monsters.”
“I reckoned you’d be better with kids,” Jay said, clearly amused. “You’re good with Patience.”
“Patience has known me her whole life. And she’s not a career criminal.”
“Yet.”
Sebastian shot him a glare, then sighed. “You handle them pretty well.”
Jay shrugged. “They’re afraid of me. I’ve mostly just been doing what Ruth would do.”
“Ruth Sumner?” Sebastian asked, recalling the woman he’d met—the one who’d looked out for Jay after he left home. “Frizzy hair, wears cardigans? Like a cuddly toy made a wish to become human? That Ruth?”
“She’s like that with you,” Jay replied, “because you’re a polite, well-behaved boy. Trust me—she knew how to handle a classroom.”
The thought of Ruth Sumner terrorising a room of unruly children put a weary smile on Sebastian’s face; the thought of Jay in that position, even more so. “You ever thought about having kids?”
Jay went quiet a moment; he moved off Sebastian’s shoulder and shifted on the sofa to face him. His expression was closed-off, wary—maybe even afraid. “Making plans, are we?”
Belatedly, Sebastian recognized his question as one that couples asked each other when things were getting serious. He wasn’t sure what the benchmark for “serious relationship” was, but they’d probably passed that point sometime before Jay killed a man for him.
His mind recoiled at the thought of a future without Jay. But the rest of it—kids, a family—felt like something that could only happen to someone else. It felt like a lie.
“I don’t know.” Sebastian sighed and tipped his head back against the sofa. “I think I’d be a horrible father.”
Jay’s expression softened; he reached out to touch Sebastian’s face, thumb brushing his cheekbone as he leaned in to kiss him.
Sebastian made a soft noise into Jay’s mouth, setting the bag of peas aside so he could wrap an arm around Jay’s waist and pull him closer. Jay settled into Sebastian’s lap, hands moving to grab him by the shoulders—
And Sebastian gasped at the flare of pain. The ice had taken some of the swelling down, and the painkillers were kicking in, but the bruises on his shoulder were still sensitive to the touch.
“Fuck.” Jay immediately pulled back, hands flying off his skin and hovering nervously. “Did I hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” Sebastian assured him, through clenched teeth. “Just stings a bit.”
Relief flashed across Jay’s face before it settled into something far more devious.
Anticipation thrummed through Sebastian’s body. “Oh, god.”
Jay drew in close once more; one hand rested on Sebastian’s uninjured shoulder, whilst the other closed around his upper arm, below the lowermost edge of the bruise. His open mouth brushed Sebastian’s, measured breaths mixing with Sebastian’s harsh pants; his hand drifted upward, brushing ever so gently across the bruised area, covering it with his palm.
Then he grinned against Sebastian’s lips and squeezed, taking Sebastian’s mouth and hungrily swallowing his eager, pained moan.
Vaughan hadn’t made any further moves since last night. He needed another nudge.
The car park on the corner gave Jay and Moran a solid view of the pub’s front entrance; it was early in the afternoon, and there was a decent flow of lunch traffic. According to Companies House, this place was owned and managed by a man named Ron Walton. A quick look at the Met’s staff database confirmed that Walton was former police, which explained why he’d agreed to hold Vaughan’s money.
“Ready?” Moran asked from the passenger seat.
Jay craned around to collect the clipboard and lanyard from the car’s back seat. “Just about.”
Moran nodded. “Give me five minutes or so.”
He stepped out of the car and made his way into the pub; Jay waited exactly four minutes and thirty-seven seconds before following, slinging the lanyard around his neck.
The pub was fairly traditional: low ceilings, hardwood floors, brewery-branded dartboards and beer mats, football and rugby posters all over the walls. The back doors led out into a wide, fenced-off beer garden. Sebastian was at a table in a corner, sitting a discreet distance from the staff-only door near the bar.
Jay approached the bar and flashed the badge hanging from his lanyard. “Health and Safety,” he said briskly. “I’m here to conduct an inspection.”
The girl behind the bar offered him a smile that was more of a grimace. “Just a moment,” she said, before hurrying into the pub’s back rooms.
She reappeared a few minutes later with a large, burly man close behind. He was well into his fifties, heavy around the middle but with a barrel chest and massive, thick-fingered hands; he eyed Jay with something between apprehension and disdain.
“You would be …” Jay made a show of checking the papers on his clipboard. “… Ron Walton?”
“That’s right,” the man rumbled.
“Good.” Jay pulled a thermometer from his pocket. “Let’s start with the food preparation areas.”
Out the corner of his eye, Jay spotted Sebastian as he surreptitiously stood and sidled through the door into the back rooms. Meanwhile, Walton grumbled and led Jay behind the bar, into the kitchen.
Jay had given the rubric on his clipboard little more than a cursory glance, but even he could tell the situation back here was not ideal. He took note of the half-drunk coffee cup on the preparation counter and the packet of cigarettes resting next to the hob, then made a disapproving noise and scribbled a few marks on the chart.
That got Walton’s attention. He followed closely as Jay stuck the thermometer in a few half-prepared dishes, taking more notes and making a show of how unsatisfactory he found the results.
The more this went on, though, the more restless Walton became; he kept glancing over his shoulder, toward the rest of the pub, until finally he said, “I need to get back to my office.”
“No,” Jay blurted out; he hadn’t received the all-clear yet. If Walton returned to his office, he wouldn’t react politely to finding Moran there.
Walton froze. Indignation flashed across his face; he towered over Jay, seeming to fill all the remaining space in the kitchen.
Jay resisted the urge to step back and levelled Walton with a firm look. “I still need to see your walk-in refrigerator,” he said, hefting the thermometer.
Walton’s jaw clenched. Jay held his gaze, pulse pounding in his throat.
With a sharp, “Fine,” Walton led the way to the back of the kitchen.
It was whilst Jay was making more disapproving noises over the thermometer that his phone buzzed from his pocket. Moran had sent a text:
Clear
Jay allowed himself a quiet breath of relief. “All right,” he said, making a few extra marks on the chart as he stepped out of the fridge. “That concludes the inspection. You should receive a report within fourteen days.”
Walton nodded, clearly eager to have Jay out of his pub. Jay felt the man’s eyes on him all the way out the door.
Moran was waiting in the car park, leaned up against the side of the car. “How’d it go?”
Jay opened the driver’s side door, throwing the clipboard into the back seat. “If I were a real inspector, I’d have the whole place shut down.”
Moran didn’t bother to hide his grin as they climbed into the car. He pulled out his phone and held the screen so Jay could see it; he’d taken a few photos of Walton’s office, including the safe beneath the desk. It was a heavy, solid unit with a mechanical combination lock.
“If the money’s anywhere,” Moran said, “I’d bet it’s in there.”
“Can you get it open?”
“Not quickly or quietly,” Moran replied. “We need a safecracker. Or two.”
“Well, at least it’ll give them something to do.” Jay reached for his own phone. “I’ll have Paul fetch them and meet us here tonight.”
Moran winced. “Tonight?”
“If we wait too long, Vaughan might move the money again.” Jay’s thumbs paused over his phone. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just—” Moran sighed. “I had a client meeting tonight.”
Right. It had been so easy to forget Moran had a real life—one that didn’t always have him following at Jay’s heel.
“I can cancel it,” Moran offered, already resigned to the idea.
“No,” Jay replied immediately. “You should go.”
Moran blinked, worried. “You’re sure?”
“We’ll need to wait for the pub to close anyway, so just meet up here once you’re done.” Jay couldn’t resist giving Moran a teasing look. “Unless you’re too old to do two things in one night.”
Moran rolled his eyes, but his retort was interrupted as Jay’s phone rang.
Sebastian led the way into the hotel; Jay followed close behind with his phone in his hands, scanning through footage from the CCTV cameras.
When they knocked at the door to the room, Aaron opened it within seconds. “I was in the shower,” he said, defensively—the panicked babble of a kid who knew he was in trouble. “He didn’t say nothing, he just—I got out and he’d gone.”
“You called us right away?” Sebastian asked.
Aaron nodded.
It had taken them an hour to get to the hotel from Ilford. Assuming Hunter had stayed on foot, he could be three or four miles away by now—
“I’ve got him,” Jay interrupted, eyes on his phone. “Camera in the lift. Looks like he got off on one of the upper floors.”
An awful thought crossed Sebastian’s mind. “Aaron,” he said, unsure if there was a gentle way to ask, “would Hunter try to jump?”
“I—” Aaron glanced nervously between Sebastian and Jay. “I don’t know. Maybe. He—things get bad, sometimes.”
“Go,” Jay told Sebastian. “I’ll keep an eye on the cameras.”
Sebastian bolted for the lifts. The hotel had a terrace on the upper levels, used for the occasional reception but otherwise unattended; he punched the button for the corresponding floor, heart in his throat as the lift crawled upward.
If Hunter had already jumped, someone would’ve seen the body on the pavement outside. Sebastian and Jay couldn’t have missed the commotion on the way in. He latched onto that thought like a lifeline as he shouldered through the terrace doors, the wind howling around him.
Hunter was sitting on the ground, huddled up against the low glass wall that separated the terrace from oblivion.
With a shivering breath, Sebastian fumbled for his phone and sent Jay a quick text, telling him Hunter was okay. It only occurred to him afterward that he wasn’t entirely sure that was true.
Hunter glanced up, saying nothing as Sebastian settled in next to him, back to the glass. Sebastian retrieved his packet of cigarettes and knocked one loose, sheltering it from the wind with cupped hands as he lit it.
“Can I have one?” Hunter asked.
“No,” Sebastian replied, inhaling deeply.
Hunter sniffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “We used to live in a tower like this,” he said quietly. “With Mum. Not as big, or as nice, but … you could see everything from up there, yeah? Before the fire.”
A few years ago, a council tower in Kensington had gone up in flames. The building’s residents were ordered to shelter in place rather than risk a crush in the stairwells, and seventy of them had burned to death or died of smoke inhalation.
Sebastian hadn’t been living in London at the time; he’d come up for air between deployments to learn the latest horror inflicted on the city of his birth wasn’t caused by a terrorist attack, but by the cladding used to make an old council building less unsightly to its affluent neighbours. Cladding that had gone up like a torch when one isolated kitchen fire managed to reach an open window.
At the time, Aaron and Hunter would’ve been about seven or eight years old.
“You scared your brother,” Sebastian told him.
“Sorry,” Hunter muttered, hunching into his hoodie.
Sebastian sat and smoked, hands still cupped around the cigarette, until it burned down to the filter. He stubbed it out on the concrete floor and dug his phone from his pocket, pulling up the pictures he’d taken of the safe in the pub. “Think you can get into this?”
Hunter studied the photos for a moment. “Holder Security AC36,” he said. “It’s an old model. Could get through it in, like, fifteen minutes.”
“Good.” Sebastian stood and flicked the remains of his cigarette over the edge of the terrace. “Come on.”
Jay kept his laptop open next to him in the back seat of the car, one earbud in as he monitored the audio feed from Jones’ phone. So far, there wasn’t much to report; Jones was in for the evening, watching some panel show.
The parcel Jay had been expecting arrived just before he left for Ilford, so he’d brought it with him. He slit the tape on the box with his keys, opening it up to reveal the UV torch he’d bought a few days ago.
He clicked the power switch; the battery had a bit of a charge, and a violently purple light shone from the end of the torch. It revealed a few things about the back of the car that Jay would rather not know, and with a noise of disgust he clicked it off again.
Up in the driver’s seat, Paul drummed his fingers along the steering wheel. “Any word from Moran?”
Jay checked his phone. “Nope. Still tied up.”
The pub was closed as of a few minutes ago, and Walton had gone upstairs—apparently, he lived in the flat above. But according to the texts Moran had been sending for hours now, Tony Banneret liked to party. Jay had begun to worry he intended to stay out all night.
“We could call the twins in now,” Paul suggested. “Get this done right away.”
“The last time I went on a job without Moran, I was nearly shot.” Jay paused, remembering. “The time before that, too, actually.”
Paul shot him a look through the rearview mirror. “It’s a pub in east London, not the Bank of England.”
“Not what I meant,” Jay said. “He needs to know I’m all right.”
Paul made a thoughtful noise and leaned back in his seat. “I was wondering why he’s down here, playing in the dirt with us.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You know what I mean,” Paul said, laughing quietly. “His lot don’t steal cash, they steal banks. A man like that’s only in the game if he’s got obligations. Promises to keep, people to look after.”
Jay carefully considered the back of Paul’s head. “You speaking from experience, then?”
Paul shrugged.
After a moment, Jay said, “You’re not their father.”
Paul twisted in his seat and gave Jay a questioning look.
“Aaron and Hunter,” Jay explained. “I looked up their birth certificates. Your legal name’s not on there—it’s some other bloke.”
There was an amused twist to Paul’s mouth. “And how do you know what my legal name is?”
Jay gave him a flat glare.
Paul sighed and turned back to face the front of the car. “An old mate of mine took them in,” he said. “Taught them everything he knew—figured having a trade would keep them out of the gangs. Died before he could leave them the business, though.” He let out a soft breath. “He asked me to look after them.”
Jay checked his phone again. Still nothing from Moran.
This time, it was Paul who met Jay’s eyes through the rearview mirror. “Why are you doing this?”
Jay shrugged. “A situation like this can escalate, fast. That’s the last thing any of us need.”
“Not that.” Paul gestured vaguely. “This. All of it.”
Jay rolled his eyes. “Well, for starters, I have to pay rent in fucking London.”
Paul seemed to contemplate that for a moment. “Thing is, I’ve met a lot of villains in this city,” he said. “And yeah, most of them are doing it for the money. But some of them … it’s about the game, for its own sake. It gives them something they can’t get anywhere else.” His gaze settled intently on Jay through the mirror. “Something the world won’t let them have.”
Before Jay could even start reacting to that, there was a crash and a shout from inside the pub.
Chapter 5 of “The Safecrackers’ Take” will be published on November 16! To get it delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe here:
… And if that’s too long to wait, you can also get the completed story as an ebook.
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