Page 39 of Deader than Dead

“I won’t be going on any more dates,” I said. “I met him. I met the mythical man.” I raised my gaze to Bellamy’s, his eyebrow slightly raised. “And he’s wonderful. He’s everything I ever hoped he would be.” I was ignoring the thief part. We’d work it out. Either he’d keep doing it and I’d come to terms with it, or he’d diversify. Maybe he’d become the antiques expert he already claimed to be. Bellamy’s expression softened at my words.

“Oh.” My mum was silent for a few beats while she gathered her thoughts. “How did you meet? Where did you meet? When can I meet him?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. That was an understatement. The two of us were going to need to make up a story that didn’t involve him stealing a mask, taking a cyanide pill, and me meeting him as a corpse. Not to mention everything that had transpired after that. “And as for when you’ll get to meet him… Soon, hopefully. Things are very new between us, so we need to spend some time getting to know each other first. But I promise you’ll be the first to meet him.”

I brought the conversation to an end as quickly as I could after that, Bellamy pulling me to my feet. “No more dates, hey?” he said. “That’s a shame.”

I wound my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, our bodies fitting together. “I’ll rephrase that. No more dates with random men. You and me, however, are going to go on plenty of dates together.”

“Sounds good,” he said, his lips moving closer to mine. Before we could kiss, another phone started ringing, this one playing a pop song that I vaguely recognized but couldn’t name.

Bellamy hurried over to the bag and pulled another phone out. “My sister,” he explained. “I called her before O’Reilly’s men grabbed me. I was scared enough to tell her I loved her. I never tell her I love her. So she’s probably panicking.” He squinted at his phone, wincing. “Twenty missed calls.”

“Ouch,” I said as Bellamy raised the phone to his ear and answered it. Hopefully, not all of those twenty calls had been from his sister, but from the way he’d said it, it was safe to assume he believed most of them were. I crouched down and checked through the bag to make sure everything was there while I listened to the half of the conversation I could hear.

“I’m fine… Really I am. Yes, I know. There was something of a situation, but everything’s okay now. No, I haven’t been ignoring you. I… er… lost my phone. Of course I’m telling you the truth.” Bellamy’s expression was pained. What choice did he have, though, but to lie? He could hardly tell her the truth. I located another phone in the bag, Bellamy holding his hand out for it. Two phones. Another reminder that we still had a lot to learn about each other. “Yes, I know you’ve been worried, and I’m sorry. I really am, but I promise you I’m fine. Actually, I met someone.”

Whatever his sister had said in response to that had Bellamy’s lips curving up into a smile. He lifted his gaze to mine. “Tall. Blond. Blue eyes. Extremely handsome. Great kisser.”

I was smiling too as I threw the bag over my shoulder. I held out my hand and Bellamy took it, the two of us making our way toward the gate as he continued talking. “I have to go, Vic. It’s been one hell of a day. Yes, tell Mum to stand down. Nobody needs to report me missing and waste police time. It was just me being careless with my phone. Yes, and that.”

He said goodbye and hung up. “She knows I’m lying to her, but she’s decided it’s a cover for my night of torrid sex, and I’d rather have her believing that than keep digging for the actual story.”

“Well…” I offered Bellamy a smirk. “It was quite torrid.”

“It was,” Bellamy agreed.

We both fell silent as we reached the gate. Despite not having a lackey left to drive it, O’Reilly’s van had gone. I took that as a good sign that she wasn’t lying in wait for us. Her survival would need addressing. But not tonight. Not when both Bellamy and I were running on empty. We were hungry and dehydrated, and neither of us smelled too good after our time trapped in the shed. “Where to?” I asked.

Bellamy considered the question for a moment. “My place is the closest.”

“Your place,” I agreed, barely even needing to think about it. As long as it had a shower and a bed, it would do nicely. Besides, it would give me a chance to learn more about this man that I already loved but didn’t know. I tapped the strap of the bag on my shoulder. “I have a change of clothes.”

Bellamy laughed. “That’s handy.”

Chapter Twenty

Bellamy

It seemed so ridiculously mundane after everything that had happened to stroll down the path toward the familiar front door of my house. Even if it was hand in hand with a man I hadn’t known twenty-four hours before, but who was now everything to me. Ordinary ended in a gigantic crash of reality as I unlocked the door—thankfully my keys had been in the pocket of my jeans and had survived death and resurrection—and took in the absolute mess that awaited me. “Fuck,” I said as I turned in a slow circle to take in the absolute devastation wrought in my absence.

Not a single item was where it should have been as I went from room to room. Someone had upturned the drawers, their contents scattered across the carpet. Clothes were strewn everywhere. A vase that my mother had insisted on buying for me, despite my protestations that I’d never have flowers to put in it, was now in a million pieces, tiny shards of blue glass glittering on the kitchen linoleum. Which, I guess, solved that problem. Shame I hadn’t even used it once and now never would. Maybe John was the type of man who bought flowers. Someone had knocked all the toiletries off the shelf onto the bathroom floor, and then trod on the toothpaste by the looks of it.

John remained a silent shadow at my shoulder as I toured the war zone. “I’m guessing,” he finally said as we stood in the bedroom doorway and took in the mattress slashed from top to bottom, “that you’re not normally this messy?”

Despite the gravity of the situation, a bubble of laughter escaped from my chest. Now I came to think about it, John’s place had been so tidy it had been almost clinical. “If I was, would it be a deal breaker?”

John’s eyes glittered with amusement. “No, but it might make me think twice about moving in with you.”

Moving in? I waited for the panic to strike, for the second thoughts to hit like they usually did if a boyfriend suggested it, but they were completely absent. Yeah, we’d move in together, and I doubted it would be that long before it happened. Even now, we were still holding hands, like we couldn’t face breaking that simple point of contact. “I guess O’Reilly sent her goons here to search for the mask.” A sense of déjà vu had me frowning as I said it. “I think I knew that, but that it happened too close to when I died for me to fully remember it. It’s there, but it’s fuzzy, like something that happened to someone else rather than to me.”

“Don’t force it,” John said, his expression earnest. “It’s probably better if you don’t remember.”

I nodded. I could certainly see how not revisiting feeling so backed into a corner that I’d ended my life would be beneficial to my mental health. John followed as I stepped over the threshold. “We can tidy it,” he said. “Most of it’s just superficial damage.”

I walked over to the bed, close enough that I could run my fingers over the rip in the mattress where the stuffing bulged out. Letting go of my hand, John grabbed the edge and flipped it over to reveal that the other side was untouched. “There,” he said. “Good as new.”

The full-length mirror on the other side of the bedroom had somehow remained intact. Possibly because even O’Reilly’s men weren’t stupid enough to think I could hide a mask inside a mirror. Stepping over the mess on the floor to get to it, I regarded my reflection with barely concealed contempt. I looked tired, my face pale, and the shadows under my eyes darker than I could ever remember seeing them. My hair was lank, the sweat from being locked up in the shed having taken its toll.

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