Page 31 of Deader than Dead

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Hold that thought.”

We were still smiling as we walked through the door, hand in hand. They didn’t last long as we walked straight into a wall of men.

Chapter Sixteen

John

There were five men, two of them immediately recognizable as Gold Tooth and Crocodile. Gates, I corrected myself, but no, he’d always be Crocodile to me. No Giant, Monstrous or Gargantuan, though. They must have stayed behind at the tower block. Gold Tooth lifted his arm, the barrel of his gun pressing against my forehead for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He accompanied the threat with a smile, offering me a flash of the tooth that had earned him the nickname I’d given him. “We need to stop meeting like this.”

He laughed at his own joke. He was the only one, Crocodile regarding me like something he’d stepped in, and the other three men not demonstrating anything except a slight boredom. Apart from Gold Tooth pressing a gun to my head, the rest hadn’t moved. Almost like they were waiting for something.

That something stepped out from behind the line of men and I fought to keep the shock off my face as I took in the woman who couldn’t be anybody but O’Reilly. When Cade had casually dropped the fact that O’Reilly was a woman into conversation, I’d had little time to consider what she might be like, but I’d obviously formed some sort of picture. A tall, statuesque femme fatale maybe, or failing that a butch bodybuilder.

This woman was neither of those things. She looked to be in her early thirties, and with mousey-brown hair pulled back in a severe ponytail and brown eyes hidden behind glasses, bordered on nondescript. She wasn’t tall either. No bigger than five-foot-two, which meant the men surrounding her completely dwarfed her, all of us—Bellamy and me included—over six foot.

It wasn’t just her physical appearance, though. It was her demeanor. I would have expected aggression, or at the very least irritation, but she seemed rather unimpressed as her gaze flicked between Bellamy and me, pausing for an extra second or two on our joined hands. Her lack of surprise at finding him upright and breathing deserved more consideration later, when I didn’t have a gun pointed at my head. Assuming there was a later.

Apart from Gold Tooth, the men stepped aside as she walked forward and came to a stop in front of us. She waved a hand at Gold Tooth, her head barely reaching his shoulder. “That won’t be necessary. You won’t run, will you, gentleman? You’re not that stupid, right?” Her voice matched her appearance, soft and almost melodic. How the hell had a woman like this gotten involved in organized crime?

I cast a quick glance to the exit as Gold Tooth lowered the gun. It was only a tantalizing few meters away. If we hadn’t shared a kiss, would we have made it outside? It was doubtful. They’d probably been watching the building for some time. We could make a run for it. Bellamy might make it, seeing as they needed him alive, but they’d have no such compunction with me, and I didn’t really fancy a bullet in the back. Bellamy seemed to think the same, his hand in mine an anchor that tugged me back when I leaned that way.

“We won’t run,” Bellamy said.

“Good boy,” O’Reilly said like she wasn’t around the same age as us. Her gaze flicked between us once more, sharp and assessing despite her unremarkable appearance. Yeah, this woman wasn’t stupid. “I suppose you thought you’d get away with it.”

“Get away with it?” I questioned, fighting to keep the frown off my face. It seemed better to keep my cards close to my chest.

O’Reilly’s lips curved slightly. “Your plan to pretend that the reanimation hadn’t worked.” So that’s what they’d assumed. That we were accomplices in some sort of master plan to pull the wool over their eyes. If only. They couldn’t have been further from the truth. We were as much in the dark as they were about what was going on. “Lucky that we have cameras in the building,” she said. Her gaze flicked to Bellamy. “Did you think you were being stealthy when you left in the middle of the night? That we weren’t watching you?” She didn’t leave him an opening to answer. “You weren’t. We knew exactly what you were doing, and we let you leave. We were hoping you would lead us to where you’d hidden the mask.” She gave a shrug. “No matter. We’ll get there in the end.”

They’d followed Bellamy then. At least to my building. And then all they’d needed was Cade’s confirmation to know exactly which flat to come to, and who it was Bellamy had run to. And then they’d added two and two together to make five, imagining a secret plot between the two of us that had never existed. I couldn’t decide if I should feel flattered or insulted. Had they been outside all night? Why not move on us straightaway? Why wait? I guess because they’d been waiting for O’Reilly. She gave the impression that she couldn’t be rushed, even if it was to gain an occult artifact that would give her immense power.

Bellamy had stayed silent throughout O’Reilly’s recounting of the facts. Albeit with something of a pained expression on his face. No doubt, he regretted not realizing they’d followed him. I didn’t blame him, though. He’d come back to life with only sketchy memories of how he’d gotten there. He’d had far more important things to worry about.

O’Reilly arched an eyebrow. “Nothing to say?” She jerked her head toward the exit. “In that case, shall we go, then?”

Bellamy lifted his chin. “Take me, but leave John be. He’s got nothing to do with any of this apart from having had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Bellamy,” I warned.

O’Reilly pushed her glasses more firmly on her nose, the action giving her more the look of a helpful librarian about to point out where the books on ancient history could be found, rather than an organized crime boss. Her gaze dropped to our entwined fingers, studying them for longer this time, Bellamy’s hand twitching in mine. Still, neither of us let go. “I think not,” she said. She pointed at me, but her gaze stayed fixed on Bellamy. “I think we might’ve found the perfect incentive for you to tell us what we want to know.”

Fuck! That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.

“Bring them both,” O’Reilly said as she made for the door. Gold Tooth roughly seized my shoulder, while Crocodile did the same to Bellamy, our hands torn apart as we were frog-marched to the exit. Before we could step outside, O’Reilly paused. “Wait. Search them. Both of them. We don’t want any more nasty surprises.” She prodded Bellamy in the chest with her index finger. “I bet you thought you were so clever, didn’t you?”

Again, he said nothing, but even as we were both subjected to an extended and incredibly invasive search in the foyer of my building, he smirked. After ensuring that we had nothing of interest hidden about our person and after taking away both my hastily packed bag and my phone, O’Reilly led us out to a waiting black van. They bundled us into the back, Crocodile and Gold Tooth climbing in with us as our personal jailors.

It was a much shorter drive than I’d anticipated, barely ten minutes passing before the van came to a halt. I’d expected them to take us to their dastardly center of operations, the tower block, but we hadn’t been traveling for anywhere near long enough to have made it to South London. Bellamy and I had shared numerous looks in the back of the van, but hadn’t spoken. What was the point with Crocodile and Gold Tooth listening in and ready to relay anything we said to O’Reilly?

When they hustled us out of the van, I didn’t recognize the area. That was the problem with London. It was so huge you could be in an adjoining neighborhood to where you’d lived for years and you wouldn’t realize it. “Where are we?” I asked. My question fell on deaf ears, neither Gold Tooth nor Crocodile having any inclination to answer. Bellamy’s slight shrug when I looked to him said he didn’t recognize it either.

They led us down a stone path between two fences, the urge to laugh, strong, as we rounded the corner and our destination came into view. An allotment. Of all the places they could have taken us, they’d brought us to an allotment. It wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when you thought about organized crime. Or even the second or third.

It was a fairly large allotment, rain barrel, rows of leafy vegetables, a compost heap, and all. It also housed a wooden shed. The type that was ten-a-penny in many a garden throughout the land. “Yours?” Bellamy asked of O’Reilly as he looked around the allotment. “I didn’t have you down as the gardening type. It just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

I scanned my surroundings, trying to work out what their game was. No graves had been dug, which didn’t mean they wouldn’t dig any. They’d just have to uproot a few vegetables first. No sign of a spade, but the shed could be full of tools. Why here? Why not the tower block? Did they think we were going to be so easy to get the information out of that they couldn’t be bothered to drive that far? Perhaps we weren’t worth the petrol money.

What was in the shed we were being marched toward? Thumbscrews? A torture rack? A man with bulging muscles and his face covered to protect his identity, who’d work us over for the next couple of hours and had a particular penchant for collecting fingernails.

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