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Fuck it.

Wasn’t as if he had anything else to do.

So he started drumming. Fingertips against the duct beside him. Something to break the silence. Stop him thinking. The hollow metal answered with a low, satisfying note. Jake tapped it again. Then against the pipe above his head. Different pitch. Higher.

Huh.

He then mapped the surrounding space with a few more experimental taps. The duct beside his leg gave him something close to a kick drum. The thinner pipe overhead rang sharper, almost snare-like. A section of loose venting further along produced a bright metallic ping that could pass for a ride cymbal if he squinted hard enough.

He grinned.

It wasn’t the worst kit he’d ever played.

So he established a steady beat. Right hand keeping time. Left hand filling the gaps. The rhythm lived somewhere deeper than conscious thought, buried in muscle memory after decades behind a kit. And the effect was immediate. His breathing slowed. His panic eased. The darkness retreated a fraction. Because rhythm was simple. Reliable. One beat followed another. Always. It didn’t matter if his life was falling apart. If he was trapped in a ceiling waiting for rescue or suffocation.

Rhythm made sense.

He tapped around the floor, and his hand closed around two thin lengths of metal pipe. Perfect. He weighed them experimentally before rapping one against the duct. The sharp crack echoed through the crawl space.

“Oh, now we’re talking.”

If he was dying in here, he was at least going out with decent sticks.

So he perched back against the ductwork and launched into a proper fill. Right-left-right-right. Left-right-left-left. The metal rang and rattled around him as he worked through old rudiments and patterns he’d been playing since he was a teenager. Paradiddles became rolls. Rolls became fills. Fills became entire sections of songs.

Soon he wasn’t trapped in a ceiling anymore. He was back in a rehearsal room with Deacon and Raff. Back on stage with Neon Arcade. Back behind a real kit with sweat running down his neck and a crowd moving to something he’d created.

The pipes clattered beneath his hands.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Crash.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

Crash.

A fast tom run across the ductwork.

Then another.

And despite everything, despite the pain everywhere and the dust in his lungs and the genuine possibility he might die up here, Jake laughed.

* * * *

Harrison pulled up outside Unit Four and frowned.

The building was practically new. Clean brickwork, intact windows, fresh cladding. Nothing about it suggested a last-minute call to make something safe, and there was certainly no sign of Jake. No van. No tools. No work taking place at all.

Harrison got out anyway and checked the unit properly before pulling out his phone and calling Paul Levenson.

Straight to voicemail.

“Fuck.”

He tried again. Same result.

Perhaps calling him now risked tipping him off that the investigation was closing in on his son, but Harrison needed to know whether this was the unit Levenson had claimed Jake was working at. Because either Harrison had misunderstood him, Jake had been moved somewhere else—