Page 43 of Too Close To Home

It was the only thing he hadn’t yet lost.

Deacon slapped his cup down on the desk hard enough to rattle it. “We’re thirty-one, mate.”

“And?”

“It’s about time I stopped pissing about. Settled down, y’know? Had kids or summat.”

“Those your ideas or hers?”

“I don’t see the Brits calling us up, mate.”

“They would if we did more than covers.”

“That’s what the pub crowds want, Jake. You wanna get paid for banging your drums, you gotta play the things they know.” He cocked his head, drawing his eyebrows in. “You writing again?”

Jake shook his head. Not in denial, but in avoidance. He still wrote. Always had. But not with Deacon anymore. That had stopped a long time ago, when Deacon leaned into covers and steady gigs. So Jake kept it to himself. Private.

He was a drummer anyway. Not a singer. Not a frontman.

“You know what?” Deacon pointed at him. “You should join the police.”

Jake snorted. “What?”

“You sit there picking people apart like they’re two seconds off confessing. What’s one of those people who point the finger?”

“Profiler.”

“That’s it. One of them.”

Jake gave a half-smile and looked down into the sludge pretending to be coffee. “Don’t always get it right, though, do I?”

“I dunno, Jake. You’ve always had a good read on people.” Deacon leaned back in his chair. “Maybe not the blokes you bend over your drum kit in the back of your van, seeing as you apparently can’t tell an actual music fan from some knobhead who bought a band tee in TK Maxx. But people? You’re usually pretty good at knowing who’s straight with you and who isn’t.”

Jake narrowed his eyes.

“Probably cause you’ve got such a fucking thing about people lying to you.”

Jake opened his mouth, ready with a suitably offensive comeback, but apparently the universe decided to save Deacon by opening the estate-agent door. Jake glanced across. Then met with a pair of warm brown eyes.

Harrison.

Jake’s body reacted before his brain told it not to, and he straightened. Squared his shoulders. Dragged a hand through his hair as his pulse gave one hard kick.

Fuck’s sake.

He’d seen the man twice. That was it. Yet apparently his body had already decided Harrison Black walking into a room was worth him paying attention to. Worse, Jake knew Deacon had just watched the whole fucking thing happen.

He didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.

Because if there was one man alive who knew every one of Jake’s tells, it was Deacon Froggatt.

And Jake had just given him the full fucking set.

DI Harrison Black stepped inside, scanning the room before closing the door and lifting his warrant card. “Are you Deacon Froggatt?”

“Aye, that I am.” Deacon gestured him in. “Come in.”

Jake stood. He hadn’t decided to; his body had just done it.