‘What’s happening with Harlan?’ Belle asked Jack when she got back to Beechwood Farm.
‘Nothing much. He’s been talking to Javier Matias from the cartel. Matias will be at the Savoy at one o’clock on Wednesday for a meet.’
Belle sat back, thinking. ‘I want to go to the gatehouse. Get some things. It’s safe now, I suppose?’
Jack nodded. ‘I’ve been nosing around over there. He’s just gone. Probably back to town. Place is deserted. You OK to go back there, after what happened?’
Belle shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’ Don’t think about it. Jack’s words to her. Wise words, too. She wouldn’t think about any of it.
‘Tomorrow morning then. OK?’
‘OK.’
He yawned and held out a hand. ‘Time for bed.’
They had closed the bedroom door on the rest of his mates. Most nights the others were up late, chatting, laughing. Maybe they feared sleep. Belle wondered if maybe in dreams all their past battles came back to haunt them. She didn’t know. Now as she sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand slipped under his pillow and brushed unexpectedly against cold metal.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, lifting the pillow, showing him what she’d found.
‘Insurance,’ said Jack, peeling off his shirt in the half-light.
Belle nodded slowly. She picked up the gun, weighed it in her hand. Remembered emptying three rounds into Ludo’s dead body. Don’t think about it.
Jack was watching her. ‘Careful. It’s loaded.’
‘I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.’
‘Gives me the horn, you holding that,’ he said with a grin.
‘Yeah?’ Belle stood up and came over to him, running the barrel of the pistol lightly over the skin of his chest.
Jack kissed her and took the gun out of her hand. Then he kissed her again; deeper, harder. When he drew back, his eyes were dark with hunger.
‘Get on that bed,’ he murmured against her mouth.
Belle was smiling. ‘Is that an order?’
‘You bet your arse it is,’ he said, and picked her up and tossed her, laughing, onto it.