BooksBarbecue
Back The Game
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. NOW
  4. One
  5. BEFORE
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. NOW
  26. Twenty-One
  27. BEFORE
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. NOW
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. BEFORE
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. Forty-Two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-Four
  53. Forty-Five
  54. Forty-Six
  55. Forty-Seven
  56. Forty-Eight
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. NOW
  61. Fifty-Two
  62. Fifty-Three
  63. Fifty-Four
  64. Fifty-Five
  65. AFTER
  66. Fifty-Six
  67. Acknowledgements
  68. About the Author

‘I guess, finding Holly Edwards like that, something just… snapped,’ Mark replied, rubbing his temples and closing his eyes for a second or two. ‘I thought she’d be alive. That was how I’d redeem myself. Prove I was right about those people being mixed up in something no one was willing to accept.’

‘The Game.’

Mark nodded slowly, already planning his first move, when they eventually released him. There were things he could do. Still time. It’s unlikely that he would be out there, watching to see if he was released. Whoever he was, he would be sitting back and waiting. Watching the news or something similar.

Keeping Natasha captive.

If she was still alive, of course.

She had to be, Mark thought. Hope is a dangerous thing, but he needed to hold on to it.

‘And how do you feel now?’ DS Lee said, her soft Lancastrian tones reaching over the table and giving him comfort.

‘Tired,’ Mark replied, telling the truth. He could feel the weight of exhaustion bearing down on him. Determination battling against it. ‘Sorry, too, if I’m honest. I’ve wasted your time. I guess I just need to sleep. Forget about all of this for a while.’

‘There’s nothing we could charge you with… other than making false statements and wasting police resources,’ DI Hicks said, closing over the folder he’d brought in with him for the last time. ‘I think we both know how well they’d hold up. I want to tell you something though: if you were on my team, I’d bounce you out so fast, you wouldn’t know your arse from your feet. If – and I don’t think you need me to tell you, it’s a pretty damn big if – they let you back in MCU, you need to get some help, mate. Cracking when you’ve found a body is the last thing you should be doing. Going off on your own is fine and dandy if you want to be a fake cop on a TV show, but this is the real world. You never do that.’

‘Thank you,’ Mark replied, leaving off the rest of the sentence. For the lecture, Einstein. This was how it worked for them. If he’d been a normal person off the street, he would have been charged with every single thing they could throw at him. For him, the rules were different. Some part of him had known that, he thought. That’s why he’d been willing to at least try it.

He knew he wouldn’t be left in jail to rot on remand.