Harry.
Jevon shook Rhys awake and showed him the phone. “It’s your brother.”
“Wha—” Rhys squinted at the screen and a scowl formed on his face. He silenced the call and tossed the phone aside. “Fuck that shit.”
Jevon stared, eyebrow raised. “That’s what you do when your brother calls you at six in the morning?”
“Especially when he calls me at six in the morning. He probably wants to talk me through a breakfast smoothie and FaceTime a yoga class.”
That didn’t sound half bad to Jevon, but something else niggled him. He reached for the phone. Three missed calls and a bunch of message alerts lit up the screen. “He must be pretty excited about it to hassle you this much.”
“You don’t know my brother.” But Rhys took the phone as Jevon held it out and thumbed through his notifications with a sleepy frown that steadily morphed into something more awake, concerned, and confused. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Rhys sat up, already halfway out of the bed, his phone pressed to his ear. “But I need to speak to Harry right now.”
Nine
“I don’t understand.” Rhys blurred around the bedroom, gathering clothes from the floor. “Why are you asking me to check on a patient in Romford when you haven’t worked there for more than a year?”
“He’s not just a patient,” Harry said. “He’s a colleague and a mate, and I’m worried about him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been out of touch for a couple of days.”
“What about his family? Friends?”
“There’s no one local apart from his fella, but he’s in Germany on business right now. I’m sorry, bro. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Rhys yanked jeans up his legs and pulled on the T-shirt Jevon handed him. “Why are you so worried, though? The dude might have dropped his phone down the bog.”
“He has severe ME. If he’s collapsed or fallen, there’s a good chance he can’t get up.”
“Got it. I can be there in forty minutes if I run for the train. Give me the address.”
“Rhys...”
“What?”
Crickets. Rhys paused in the action of stamping into his shoes. “Spit it out, mate. If you want me to hit the road fast, you’ve got to give me everything right now. I’m on shift at midday.”
“Okay, but don’t get lairy with me till after you’ve been over there, right? Nothing matters until I know he’s safe.”
Jevon appeared in front of Rhys, somehow already dressed and holding out Rhys’s coat, wallet, and keys. His gentle eyes held questions Rhys couldn’t answer.
Rhys shook his head. “Jesus, Harry. Just tell me. This dude an axe murderer, or what?”
“No, Rhys. It’s Angelo... Angelo Giordano.”
Giordano. Rhys turned the name over and over in his mind, but it still took far too long to make the connection. And even when he did, it didn’t make any sense. “How do you know Angelo?”
“I told you—he’s a patient. At least, he used to be.”
He’s a colleague and a mate. The words echoed, repeating on a loop over and over, until links he hadn’t known were missing began to slot into place. Angelo’s condition fit Harry’s specialties perfectly—Christ, Rhys had even talked about it with Dylan.
“Listen,” Harry spoke over the chaos in Rhys’s brain. “I know I’ve got some explaining to do, but we don’t have time for that right now. Dylan’s losing his shit, and I’m worried too. It’s not like Angelo to go silent.”