Page 137 of In Too Deep

“When I got here with Raff at six.” Jake shoved a hand through his hair. “Davo opened it when looking for parts.”

“Fuck’s sake…”

“What?”

“If that’s connected to Lauren Pike’s vehicle, you’ve just contaminated potential evidence.”

“What were I supposed to do? Leave it there?”

“Yes! You call me. We preserve the location, photograph it in situ, establish exactly where it was recovered—”

“And while you’re sorting out permission to get in there, Davo finds it and it disappears.”

“That’s not the point.” Harrison stepped closer, feeling the heat from him, the fucking pull, the need. “You cannot keep wandering into active investigations because you think you’re helping.”

“And you can’t keep pretending people round here talk to police.”

“That still doesn’t give you the right to search private property.”

Jake folded his arms. “Didn’t search it. Saw it on the floor.”

“And you picked it up.”

“Aye, thought about leaving it for your lot but….” Jake stared at him as sweat slid slowly down his throat, Harrison unable to not notice it. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have. Not stupid. I get it, alright. But I saw it and if I’d left it and just rang you, he’d have hours to clear it up and that would leave nowt. So I picked it up when I had the chance.”

Harrison looked down at the fragment again. Silver metallic paint. Fresh break. Potentially nothing. Potentially the first real thing they’d had all week. So he exhaled then pulled out an evidence bag from his inside pocket.

Jake tilted his neck. “How contaminated is it?”

Harrison opened the bag. “Very.”

“Right. So it was for nowt.” Jake dropped the fragment into the bag, and their fingers brushed. Tiny contact. Nothing, really. Yet heat crawled instantly beneath Harrison’s skin, anyway.

Harrison sealed the bag and put it in his pocket. “Not necessarily.”

“Can you use it?”

“Possibly.”

Jake drew a breath. Nodded. Smiled a little. “You’re welcome then.”

Harrison peered up at him from beneath his lashes, not letting him off that easily. Because what he’d done, infuriatingly, might have given Harrison the final piece to obtain a warrant, but it still didn’t make what he’d done any less reckless.

Jake tilted his neck. “You look tired.”

“I feel it.”

“Not sleeping?”

“No.”

Jake hung his head, curls falling around his face. “Me either.”

The heat pressed around them. Heavy. Airless. Somewhere deeper in the yard, metal crashed against metal hard enough to make Harrison flinch.

Then Jake took a heavy inhale. “You also look annoyingly hot in that suit.”

Harrison snorted softly and pulled on his collar. “Far too fucking hot.”