Page 164 of Too Close To Home
Harrison nodded, turning his attention to the front of the house as movement gathered there. The stretcher came through the doorway a second later. And for a moment, the rest of the scene narrowed around it.
Emily Fisher lay swallowed beneath blankets, an oxygen mask covering most of her face as a paramedic leaned in, speaking low, keeping her comforted whether she was fully conscious or not. Her skin was pale beneath the wash of blue light, lips dry, hair tangled where it had been pushed back.
But her chest rose.
Faint. Uneven.
Alive.
Harrison’s breath left him slowly, the impact of the past days drifting enough to allow it. Not relief exactly, but something close to it.
“Clear a path,” someone called, and the officers nearest moved, guiding the stretcher through. The tight choreography of it continued without pause as she was loaded into the ambulance. Doors slammed, engine revved, lights flaring brighter as it pulled away, carrying her out of it.
Harrison watched it go, then he turned back to the uniform. “Any sign of the suspect?”
“Negative so far. Vehicle’s circulated. ANPR’s live.”
“Keep the outer contained.” Harrison gestured. “No one in or out unless they’re logged. I want door-to-door started now. Anyone saw that van leave, I want times and direction.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was only then, with the immediate movement settling into something more controlled, that his attention drifted properly across the street. To him.
Jake.
He stood beyond the cluster of officers, near his van, as if that was where someone had told him to be and he hadn’t yet worked out how to leave. There was something about him that felt misplaced here. Or maybe it was that all-consuming presence he had. The essence Harrison had noticed the first time he’d stood on a woodland path and demanded answers. Jake Whitton belonged somewhere louder, brighter. On a stage. Behind a drum kit. Anywhere but here, under the wash of blue lights, among mist and rain and the dreariness of the aftermath of a young girl having almost been lost forever.
Like his sister.
Dust clung to his clothes, his hair, his skin. And his hands…the hands Harrison had noticed before for entirely different reasons, were scraped and dirt-lined, evidence of what he’d forced his way through to get to her. That damage didn’t come from thinking things through. That came from acting before anyone could stop him. From reckless impulsivity. From a desperate man.
A hero.
But even from where he stood, Harrison could see the tremors. Subtle, but there. Adrenaline leaving him in uneven waves.
Harrison moved towards him.
Not because procedure demanded it.
Because something else did.
Up close, the effects of what he’d done were clearer. There was no fight left in him. No edge, no anger waiting to snap at those in uniform around him. Just the aftershock of it all, sitting too close to the surface. The body caught up with what the mind had pushed through. Harrison had seen it countless times. On victims. Witnesses. Officers who weren’t as hardened as they thought they were.
Harrison lived in this world.
Chris had, too.
Jake didn’t. And it wasn’t fair that he had to.
Jake looked up then, as if he knew he was being watched. Their eyes met. And everything else—the radios, the movement, the officers stepping in and out of the house, the job Harrison still had to run—fell away in an instant. It was just them. Not detective and witness. But two men, finding each other amidst the chaos. And all he could think was how a day ago, Harrison had stood in his bedsit and unravelled enough to let something as simple as a kiss knock the breath out of him. And Jake had been the one to steady him. Ground him. Pull him back from the brink without asking for anything in return.
Now it was Harrison’s turn.
“Hey.” Harrison kept his voice low as he came to a stop in front of him.
Jake glanced over Harrison, to the ambulance pulling away, blue lights and sirens cutting through. “How is she?”
“Alive.” Harrison tilted his neck to put himself in Jake’s line of sight. “Because of you.”
