Page 163 of Too Close To Home

And there. That was a breath. Not his, either. His chest tightened so fast it burned.

“Hey…” He dropped his voice instinctively softer as he hovered closer to the gap. “Hey…anyone there? It’s alright. I’m—”

He faltered. He didn’t know how to finish that. Didn’t know what he was in this moment. A stranger breaking in? A mistake? Someone about to make things worse?

But he was here.

That had to be enough.

He shoved the gap wider, forcing his shoulder through, pushing himself into the neighbouring loft. The air changed immediately. Colder, heavier in a different way. Closed off. Untouched. Then his foot came down uneven, catching on poorly laid boards, and he steadied himself, darting his gaze across the space.

“Fuck.” He dropped forward, landing hard on his knees beside a thin mattress on the floor. Blankets piled high over a shape. “Fuck. God—fuck.”

He hovered, then caught movement beneath the fabric. The faint rise and fall of breathing. Then he saw hair. Tangled and blonde and peeking out from the edge of the blanket.

He pulled the covers back fast.

Relief didn’t come. Not how he’d expected. Not what he’d spent years chasing. Because it wasn’t her. Disappointment, grief, guilt, all tangled together. Along with anger, frustration, and resentment. But he shoved it down hard, blinking it away as he forced himself to move.

Because it might not be Robyn.

But it was Emily Fisher.

He pressed his fingers to her neck, searching, finding the pulse. “Alright, love,” he said, voice rough but steadying. “You’re alright.”

He didn’t know if she was. She wasn’t moving or responding. She had her eyes shut, skin too pale in the dim. So he fumbled for his phone, fishing it out from his back pocket as he kept his fingers at her pulse point. He swiped too fast, missed the number, swore under his breath, went back, found the last call and hit dial.

One ring.

Two.

Three before it answered. “Jake, I’m sorry but I can’t—”

“I’ve found her.” Jake cut him off in a panic. “Shit, Harry, I’ve fucking found her.” He kept his fingers at her pulse point, feeling for the beat. “And she’s alive.”

chapter twenty-three

Containment

Blue lights bled across the terraced houses of Dew Lane, pulsing through net curtains and windshields.

By the time Harrison turned in, the place was choked with response units. Two marked cars angled across the kerb, an ambulance half-mounted on the pavement, its rear doors flung wide as paramedics hauled equipment in and out. He pulled up hard behind them, cutting the engine to breathe out his apprehension.

He’d kept Jake on the line long enough to get the essentials. Address, condition, confirmation she was breathing. Then everything else snapped into place. He’d notified control and the job had been graded as an immediate response. The nearest units were deployed within seconds. An ambulance was requested, the priority changing in an instant from search to preservation of life. By the time Harrison had grabbed his keys, the response was already moving.

He’d circulated the vehicle Jake had described and placed a marker against it so ANPR could pick it up across the network. That wasn’t something to sit on. Not tonight. Then he’d redirected Calder and sent him straight to the King’s Arms with explicit instructions to find Brodie and keep him there. Not an arrest, but he wasn’t someone Harrison was prepared to lose sight of either.

Murray stayed where she was, exactly where Harrison needed her. With the family. Holding that line as FLO, keeping them informed without letting the situation unravel before they had something solid to give them. And to provide feedback on how the father responded to the news his daughter had been found and where.

Because in the background, the intel caught up.

The address had come back first. Mick Underwood. Lancaster Industrial Estate staff. A direct-line employee of Emily Fisher’s father. That slotted into place alongside everything else they’d been circling without quite reaching. The van. Hired, not owned, raising its own questions. Where from, when, under what name. Whether it matched the vehicle that had brushed the edge of their enquiries earlier whose driver had never come forward. Harrison set that running before he’d even turned the ignition.

He got out of the car, smoothing his tie against the breeze. Officers glanced up, recognised him, moving to make space. He took it in as he walked. Numbers, positioning, containment. Registering what had been done right.

“Where is she?” he asked a uniformed officer in high-vis, not breaking stride.

“Paramedics have her, sir. Bringing her out now. Found in the loft. Male who located her is outside.”