Aden asked PC Willets for directions to the library. Somewhere to wait until it was time to meet Matt. He checked a map to see how to get to Woodbane Common and calculated it would take him about forty minutes to walk there. Maybe longer in the snow. He powered down Brody’s phone. He hadn’t thought to snatch the charger so he needed to conserve the battery.

The library was warm and he settled in a corner with a book, draping his damp coat over the radiator. It was hard to concentrate, and he found himself drifting off to sleep a few times. He was surprised the library staff didn’t ask him to leave, though he wasn’t doing any harm.

When it was time to go, Aden pulled on his coat and gloves, transferred one item from the bag to his pocket, and slung the bag over his shoulder. Though he no longer had any use for the contents, he still couldn’t bring himself to dump them. Maybe the fact that he kept them would show the police he hadn’t anticipated what he thought was going to happen.

Conditions were icy. Everything had crisped over and the snow crunched underfoot as he walked. Without the deep tread of Brody’s boots, the journey would have been much harder. The roads were clear but the footpaths were treacherous. Aden was hungry. That toast was probably the last thing he’d ever eat.

He knew there was no hope of talking Matt into walking away from Brody. The likelihood was that the guy would take the opportunity to make sure he had no rival. Aden knew what he was walking into. What he didn’t know was how it would all play out.

When he reached the car park, there was just one car there. Aden had no idea if it was Matt’s vehicle. There were still twenty minutes before Matt was due to arrive, so he walked along a path through some trees to get an idea of the area. There was a small lake on the right at the foot of an incline. It was partially iced over. Everything looked peaceful. The snow was still mostly pristine. Not a bad day to die. Again.

Aden took off his gloves, pulled Brody’s phone from his pocket, and tapped out a message. You made me want to be a better man than I could ever be. You made me think it was possible. Sorry there’s no perfect ending but you are perfect to me.

“Hey!”

Aden pressed send and put the phone back. When he turned Matt was several yards behind, buttoned up in a thick blue jacket, a dark beanie hat on his head, his hands bare.

“Let’s walk for a bit,” Matt said.

Aden nodded. He put his hands in his pockets.

“I really can’t believe you’re still alive.” Matt glanced at him and laughed.

“Maybe I’m not.”

“Did you tell Brody?”

“That you’d tried to drown me? Yes. He didn’t believe me.” Sorry, Brody.

“So why did you want to talk to me in person?” Matt’s gaze flickered from side to side.

Was he checking to see if they were being observed?

“I want you to leave Brody alone. The moment you laid a hand on him when he was fourteen years old, you fucked him up. Do the decent thing for once and step out of his life.”

“You needed to see me to say that? You’ve wasted my time. You have no idea what he means to me. No fucking idea. I love him and he loves me.”

“You never wanted him to love you. You wanted him to worship you. He’s not a kid anymore. Leave him alone.”

“I’ll never walk away from him.”

“Yeah, well it’s difficult when he’s such a good fuck.” Aden made himself laugh and watched Matt bristle. “That tight arse, sweet cock and his lovely mouth.” Aden groaned. “I can’t get enough of that mouth, that dirty little tongue.”

“Shut up.”

“He likes it hard and fast, doesn’t he? He makes you desperate to fuck him through the wall.”

“I said shut up.”

I don’t think so. “I’m not going to let you have him back. He’s mine now, so fuck off and find someone else.”

Matt shoved him sideways so hard that Aden stumbled and slid down the slope through the trees toward the water. Before he could get to his feet, Matt was on him, dragging him deeper in the wood. The buttons of Aden’s coat pulled open and Matt hauled him up by his lapels.

“You fucking arsehole.” Matt sneered. “You think you can take something that doesn’t belong to you without there being repercussions?”

Aden grabbed at Matt’s face, trying to scratch him, wanting evidence under his fingernails, fibres from Matt’s coat to transfer to his, anything the police might be able to use. Matt’s fist struck Aden’s jaw, then his stomach and Aden doubled over wheezing.

Aden spat blood from his mouth. “You fucking small-dicked bastard.”

Matt kicked at Aden’s legs, he crumpled to the ground, and for a brief moment, the snow soothed his sore face.

“You think he’ll still want you when he sees what you’ve done to me?” Aden scrambled to his feet, launched a fist at Matt’s face and his knuckles struck the guy’s teeth. Fuck, that hurt. But he’d made Matt’s lip bleed and further enraged him, which was the point.

When Matt swung for him, Aden lurched out of range. He couldn’t make this look too obvious.

“What makes you think he’ll ever see you again?” Matt’s eyes glittered with malice.

“What makes you think he’ll ever see you?” Aden snapped back. “Christ, I hear you can’t even last five minutes, pencil dick.”

Aden knew he was passing the point of no return. If Matt walked away now, Aden had just given him plenty of reasons to hurt Brody. He’d press 9-9-9 on his phone if the moment was right, and if he had the chance, but not yet. But this was a brittle plan. Maybe too fragile. If Matt got away with killing him, then Aden had achieved nothing and left access to Brody wide open.

“Fucking cunt,” Matt muttered.

“You think you’re such a big man.” Aden mocked him. “He was a kid. You wanted him and you took him.”

“That’s true. Not even his parents stopped that.”

Aden felt a flutter of discomfort roil through his gut. “You had to leave the school when Brody’s parents found out.”

“And they paid.”

Aden tensed. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“You caused the car crash.” Oh Christ. Aden wished he had this recorded. “You sick fuck.”

“I won’t let anyone come between me and Brody.”

Aden gulped. “Did you kill Peter too?”

“He had an unfortunate accident with his reins.”

“That you made happen. Fucking hell. You like strangling. You nearly killed Brody doing that.”

“I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“You need locking up. Leave Brody the hell alone.”

“You going to make me?”

As Matt stepped forward, Aden backed away. “I’m going to tell the police what you did, and Brody, and the head at your new school. Had your fingers in the pants of any other little lads? I bet you have, you filthy bastard.”

Matt grabbed him, twisted him so that Aden had his back against the guy’s chest, then wrapped his arm over Aden’s throat. Aden pulled at his sleeve and tried to kick back but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get free.

His plan changed. It was the one he should have gone with from the start. Kill Matt and free Brody. So what if he went to hell, at least he’d saved a guy he cared for. He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the knife. But before he could get it anywhere near Matt, the guy grabbed his wrist and wrenched the weapon from him.

Good or bad. I wish I knew.

Matt pushed him away and Aden slipped on the snow. As he levered himself up and turned, fumbling in his pocket for the phone, Matt struck him hard in the chest. It took Aden a moment to realise he hadn’t been hit, he’d been stabbed. Then came the blood. Then it hurt. Followed by panic. Oh fuck.

“Think you’re clever now?” Matt whispered and stabbed him again.

Aden clutched his chest, made sure his fingers were bloody, and grabbed Matt. “Fuck. You.” Aden had to force out the words. His lungs hurt. Matt stabbed him again.

“Stop it,” someone shouted.

It sounded like Brody. Oh fuck. Please God, no. Run, Brody. Matt let him go and Aden found himself slithering back, stumbling toward the iced over pond. He struggled to his knees and tried to crawl back up the slope. The snow was spattered with red. A lot of red. His red. He tried his hardest but he couldn’t get up the slope. Matt slid down to him, stared Aden in the face and stabbed himself in the shoulder.

What the fuck? Aden was having trouble breathing. Matt pressed the knife into Aden’s hand, and began to crawl away. When he slipped back, Aden didn’t hesitate. He slammed the blade into the top of Matt’s inner thigh. Matt cried out but still managed to get part way up the slope. Aden didn’t have the energy to do more. He was scared Matt would hurt Brody, but there was nothing else he could do. Blood was gushing from Matt’s thigh and Aden knew he’d hit an artery. Now he was definitely going to hell. With Matt. So be it.

Matt was moaning, calling for help. But it was Aden’s side that Brody came to, his beautiful eyes so wide and Aden thought if Brody’s face was the last thing he saw, dying was going to be easier than he’d thought. Aden’s eyes flickered shut.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Brody snapped and pressed on the wounds in Aden’s chest.

Hurts, hurts.

“Brody, please,” Matt called.

Aden forced his eyes open and tried to speak, but nothing came from his mouth but a trickle of blood. Shit.

Brody kept the pressure up on Aden’s chest and used his phone one-handed. “I need an ambulance. Two men with multiple stab wounds. A few hundred yards away from the car park at Woodbane Common. Hurry.”

He put the phone down. “Keep your eyes open.”

Aden tried, but it was so hard. “Dead?” he managed to ask.

“No, you’re not fucking dead.”

How the fuck he managed a smile he didn’t know. “Mean…Matt.”

“I don’t care about him,” Brody said. “I only care about you.”

 

Brody kept talking trying to sound reassuring, but there was a lot of blood and he couldn’t stop it coming out of Aden. Aden’s breathing was shallow, his face so pale he looked as if he was melting into the snow.

“Don’t you dare die,” Brody whispered. “Hang on, Aden. Please.”

When the emergency services arrived, they had to drag Brody away so they could work on Aden. Brody had cried out as they’d pulled his hands from Aden’s chest. He’d felt as if that was all that had been keeping Aden alive.

He was desperate to go with him in the ambulance but the police had other ideas. His heart lurched as the ambulance pulled away with its siren blaring. There was another ambulance waiting, but Matt lay in the snow, all alone and so much red around him that Brody knew he was dead. He expected to feel something, and he didn’t. Not for Matt. Not even hatred. He felt numb.

“Are you hurt?” someone asked.

He shook his head. All the blood was Aden’s.

“Come and sit down and tell us what you know.” A police woman took his elbow and guided him to the ambulance.

He slumped on the step at the back and someone else came up to him. “Dr. Sanders?”

Brody looked up to see PC Willets. Brody had just been to the station in Caterham and reported Aden as missing even though he’d known there was nothing the police would do. Except Willets had told him Aden had arranged to meet Matt at the common. If Brody had got here faster, if…

“I’m sorry,” Willets said. “I thought it was a lovers’ tiff. I had no idea there’d be any violence. Did you see what happened?”

“I saw Matt hit Aden, stab Aden, and I started running. Matt stabbed him again and again. They were struggling and Aden slid backwards. There was blood everywhere. Is Matt…?” Brody still had to ask.

“Yes.”

Brody held back the word good. He wanted to feel relief but instead it was as if the world was closing in on him, choking up his lungs, squeezing his heart, making his head ache. He wanted to go to Aden, but no matter how much he pleaded, the police insisted he went to the station to give a statement first. When he found out there was only one knife and Aden had been holding it, he groaned. Matt fucking things up even after he was dead.

Only when he learned Aden was in the operating theatre did he allow himself to breathe more easily. It was time for the truth and he told it all. Every dirty, twisted secret. When the police finally let him leave, Des was there waiting. Brody’s knees almost buckled when he saw the look on his brother’s face.

“No,” Brody whispered.

“It’s okay,” Des said quickly. “He’s still in theatre. East Surrey Hospital. Only a couple of miles away. I’ll take you there.”

Brody climbed into Des’s Land Rover.

“I brought you another shirt, a different coat,” Des said. “I didn’t think about your trousers.”

Brody looked down and saw the blood. Aden’s blood. He didn’t want to change, but knew he had to. Des had to help him fasten the buttons, even clip his seatbelt in place. He felt helpless. He was helpless.

“What happened?” his brother asked as they set off.

Brody thought he’d finally made sense of it, but not shared his theory with the police. He wasn’t sure whether to tell Des.

“Aden went to the police station in Caterham this morning and told them about me and Matt.”

“That it started when you were at school?”

“Yes.”

Des let out a choked groan. “I wish I’d told the police all those years ago. If I—”

“Don’t, Des. You told our parents. It was me who managed to convince them not to go to the police. This is on me, not you.”

“You’re my little brother. I should have protected you.”

“Hard to protect someone who didn’t want to be protected.” Brody sighed. “The policeman Aden spoke to didn’t take it seriously. Well, he took the sexual assault seriously, but after this length of time there was little hope of prosecuting Matt unless someone else was involved. Matt wasn’t interested in anyone else.”

“I sort of wish he had been. This would have ended so much sooner.”

“Matt called Aden while he was in the station and the cop knew where they were meeting. When I went to report Aden missing, I spoke to the same cop and he told me they were on the common. I got there in time to see Matt stab Aden. Then Aden stabbed Matt. Only in the thigh, but he must have hit his femoral artery. Matt bled out.”

“Christ. Why was Aden meeting Matt there?”

“I think he wanted to persuade Matt to leave me alone. But I also think he probably provoked Matt into lashing out.”

“Intentionally?”

“Maybe. Though I can’t think he intended Matt to kill him. But he had some plan in mind. When all this blew up about the pets being healed, though before it was in the papers, Aden deliberately rowed with me and walked out. He’d told me more than once he needed to stay under the radar and yet now he’s going to be plastered all over the news.”

“So whatever he was up to, job or no job, it’s over?”

“I guess.” A sob escaped from his throat. “I don’t want him to die.” Brody bit his lip. “I know how much blood he lost. If he’s still in theatre, it’s bad.”

“If he’s still in theatre, he’s alive. He better not die. You’re my brother and I won’t let anyone else break your heart.”

 

*  *  *  *  *

 

Aden walked out of the bathroom in the Octoplex with a smile on his face. That young guy had an inventive tongue and a beautiful arse. An added bonus had been that while Aden was fucking him, he could still hear Thorstrom’s heavy rock playing on the stage several walls away. It had been hard not to fuck to the beat.

The sudden loud popping noise brought Aden up short. He stood in the middle of the corridor trying to work out what that had been. Firecrackers? When they came again accompanied by screams, Aden’s senses shot onto alert. People emerging from the bathrooms were walking back toward the arena in the direction of trouble.

“Hey,” he called. “There’s something wrong. That sounded like shooting. We need to go another way.”

A few followed him, including the blond guy he’d just fucked. Aden wasn’t waiting around to persuade those who didn’t want to come.

“What do you think—?” a girl asked.

“Keep quiet. Hurry.”

Aden had no idea where he was going. When there was more noise, more screaming, the group was filled with a greater sense of urgency. Walking fast turned to a stumbling run until Aden heard more of what he thought were shots coming from the direction in which they were heading, and he skidded to a halt, grabbing the arm of a girl who was about to run past him.

“Not that way,” Aden whispered.

“Where shall we go?” asked the guy whose arse Aden had just reamed.

“We need to get out of the building, and hide if we can’t.”

A few yards away was an alarmed emergency door and Aden pushed it open onto a stairwell. In a snap decision based on the theory that anyone entering the building would be doing so from the ground floor, he headed up the stairs. Not everyone followed. He was in full out flight mode, attuned to his instincts, his heart racing. As they flung themselves up the concrete stairwell, he heard the clatter of someone coming up behind them. He wasn’t going to wait to find out if it was others fleeing like them or someone with a gun, and quickly cut in on the next level.

They bolted down the corridor and when they’d turned a corner, Aden tried the doors until he found one that opened. He fumbled for a light switch and cursed when he saw there were no windows, though they were probably too high to jump. But there was another door in the far corner. They seemed to be in some sort of storeroom filled with deep metal shelving units stacked with boxes and black plastic bags.

The door they’d come through wouldn’t lock. If they used something to block it, maybe it would signal to whoever the fuck was out there that there was someone inside. But it might give them time. He dashed to the other door which opened onto a small closet.

“In here,” he whispered.

He and the blond guy pushed four women and two men inside, no room for more, then they lifted a photocopier in front of it. That was the only thing heavy enough to put in front of the main door but Aden figured those in the closet had a better chance with their door partly hidden. Aden piled boxes around the copier and on top. The guy who’d helped him lift it had disappeared. He looked around for somewhere to hide and spotted a young girl and a guy crouching behind bulging plastic bags in the corner. They’d be seen instantly if someone came through the door.

Aden went over to them. “You can’t hide there. Climb up the shelving. Lie on the top.”

The guy hauled himself up and Aden helped the girl get to him. She looked no older than seventeen. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she was shaking violently.

“Not a sound,” Aden whispered.

When the pair was out of sight, he looked for somewhere for himself. He could hear those outside getting closer, the sounds of banging and clattering, the occasional rattle of gunfire. He yanked open the door of a small low cupboard, quickly put the contents on the top, ran back to switch off the light, then wedged himself inside. He hardly fit. He couldn’t get the door completely shut so held it in place and held his breath at the same time.

What the fuck was happening? A terrorist attack like the one in Paris? If there was another explanation Aden couldn’t think of it. It felt like ages since he’d fucked the guy in the bathroom and yet from there to here had probably taken not much more than ten minutes. The light went on and he stopped breathing. Though the tiny gap between the doors of the cupboard he was in, Aden saw legs clad in dark jeans going past.

“Oh God,” a guy whispered. “Shit.”

When he tugged at the doors of Aden’s hiding place, Aden’s hold on the metal slipped and the cupboard opened. The face that stared at him belonged to a boy in his teens. His eyes were wide. He had blood all over his T-shirt. Aden rolled out of the cupboard and shoved the kid inside. This time he managed to close the doors.

He’d taken no more than a step before the main door flew open and two guys came inside wearing balaclavas and carrying rifles. Aden put up his hands. The taller guy shot him.

Aden expected to fall over, but he didn’t. The bullets had hit his side and his arm. Before he did fall, he flung himself at the two men and knocked them over, one colliding with the other. He guessed he’d surprised them because they’d probably expected him to drop or run. He managed to jab his fingers into the eyes of one gunman and press hard enough to make him scream before the other gunman hauled Aden off. Aden struggled to get out of the door. If he could get into the corridor he thought it might distract them from searching the room.

One of the gunmen hauled the guy Aden had fucked from his hiding place and the pair of them were dragged into the corridor. Aden pulled the guy behind him as more shots were fired. There was an intense pain in Aden’s stomach and this time he fell, taking the man with him down as well.

“Keep still.” Aden whispered the words to the guy beneath him and to himself as well. If the gunmen thought they were dead, they had a chance.

Except it was too late for Aden.