She rushed to the car park and swung her car out and over to the electronic gates which seemed to open painfully slowly. When they’d parted just enough for her to squeeze through she floored it, with barely a glance for any traffic. At the last second she saw headlights approaching from the right. She didn’t bother to slow or to stop as her car shot out through the narrow space into the road. The other driver honked the horn but Dani just ignored it and carried on and picked up speed as she tried to close the distance to Jason.

She managed it. He was waiting at a set of traffic lights barely two hundred yards from her apartment, two cars between him and her. In the nighttime, he’d have no idea it was her car behind him as long as she kept her distance. She just needed to try and be discreet enough not to rattle him.

As she began to follow him, the same rumbling thoughts that she’d had in the apartment about what Jason could be up to were still nagging away at her, though a sense of guilt was also building. Why was she following him? He was the one person who seemed to be on her side still, despite everything. And not just despite what was happening to her in her work, but despite all of the shit that had gone between them – mostly shit that she’d thrown at him, in all honesty.

She tried to push that thought away. Yes Jason was on her side, or so he said, but there was also plenty he wasn’t telling her. He could have been open and honest about whatever out of hours appointment he now had, but he’d chosen to keep the truth from her. She wanted to know why.

They were soon heading out of the centre of Birmingham and east on the A41, a route that was by now increasingly familiar to Dani. She immediately began to wonder if Jason’s destination would once again be Knowle, where she’d last come from herself earlier that day.

Of course, that was Dani putting two and two together, but if Jason was going to Knowle to see Steven Grant, why hadn’t he just said so?

As she continued along, that final destination became an ever increasing reality, and with each turn they took, Dani’s confusion and suspicion grew. Thus far on the journey the traffic in the early nighttime had been light enough to enable Dani to stay close, though not so light as to make it obvious she was following, though now that they were entering quiet suburbia, the task was becoming harder all the time.