Page 80 of You've Got The Love
Jack’s voice doesn’t lift. “Hawk.”
Hawk’s grin flashes. “Relax. Man’s entitled to insurance. One wrong blink and I redecorate your boy’s jacket.”
“He ain’t my boy,” Jack says. “Lower the gun.”
“Or what?” Hawk asks, affectionately. “You’ll scold me?”
Jack’s eyes don’t change. “Or I’ll put you on your back lookin’ at the sky through a hole in your fuckin’ face.”
Hawk laughs. It’s real. He enjoys himself. Sick fuck. He also doesn’t lower the gun.
“Confirmation,” he says, and jerks his chin at his guy. “Again.”
The wiry fuck taps the screen. Another call pops. Same grubby room. Same two men. The camera flips to show the forecourt outside the London clubhouse, rain-glossed windows—timestamp in the corner. The man holding the phone tilts it to catch a wall clock and then a wristwatch up close. Both match what my gut already knew: this is now.
“You satisfied?” Jack asks.
Hawk watches the screen like a cat watches a fly. Then he pockets the phone himself and, finally, lowers the pistol. He doesn’t put it away. He just lets it hang, casual, pointed at the concrete between my boots.
“Yeah,” he says. “Satisfied.”
“Good,” Jack answers. “We’re done.”
“Almost,” Hawk says again, because men like him spend their lives trying to find the line where almost turns into too late. He takes half a step like he might smell her hair just to prove he can. That half step is a mile.
I feel Amber’s fingers tighten in my jacket. I tilt my head just enough that my mouth is near her ear and the words are for her and only her. “Two more breaths,” I tell her. “On the second, we move.”
She nods against my chest—the smallest brush. Brave as I have ever seen anyone be.
Hawk watches that. He recognises it. He rolls his wrist and finally shoves the pistol back under his cut, slow like it’s his idea and not because Jack’s men have shifted an inch each into a shape that would turn this dock into a meat grinder if he doesn’t.
He smiles at me like he’s giving me advice. “You keep her close,” he says. “You just don’t know what kind of sick individuals are out there in the dark.”
“Walk,” Jack says—not to me; to his own men—and the formation breathes. Two peel back to the right. One drops to the left, giving me a clean corridor. Another two move in behind, closing the rear. No one looks away from theReapers. No one moves faster than a calm man with nothing to prove.
I turn us. Amber moves with me, close under my arm, head down enough that if anyone draws she’s behind bone. I count the paces to the edge of light. One. Two. Three. The dock boards creak. The floodlight hums. Somebody a hundred meters off laughs at something that has nothing to do with any of us. The sound makes me want to break a wrist just to put the world back in tune.
At four paces, I feel the drag—the instinct to look over my shoulder and check the barrel isn’t back on her. I don’t give in. Jack does the checking for all of us. If a trigger twitches, he’ll feel it first. My palm is on her hip. Her breath is steady, too steady, the way you breathe when you’ve chosen not to shake.
Six paces. Seven. We pass the stack of pallets. I angle us a half step wider so no hand can shoot out and grab her.
Eight paces. The hard glare fades. The light loosens. The dark at the dock’s edge feels cooler, cleaner, even if it isn’t. One of Jack’s men rounds the van and opens the side door without looking at the handle like he’s done it a thousand times blind. Another climbs in and turns his body into a wall.
We step up. I help her in, and only then do I let myself look at her full-on. Her wrists are red, skin scuffed where the plastic bit. Her mouth is raw where the gag sat. Her eyes are steady in a way that makes my chest ache.
“You’re safe,” I tell her again, because the first time was for the dock and the men. This one is for her alone. “You did so good. It’s over.”
She nods. Her throat works. “Don’t let go,” she whispers, smaller than a breath.
“Not letting go,” I say, and get in after her, keeping my shoulder in the doorway while Jack backs in last. He never turns his back on the light. He rides it backward, as if he’s pulling it shut with him.
The door slides. The world outside becomes a strip of light that narrows and then a seam and then a line and then nothing.
Only when the van rolls and the dock falls away do I allow my hands to shake once—quiet, hidden, gone—so they won’t do it later when she needs me steady. I don’t know who’s driving my van, but I couldn’t give a shit. I takeher bound wrists in my palms the way you hold a thing you’re not going to break. I press my mouth to the scraped skin and say, low, for her ear, “I’m so sorry,liefje.”
I mean it so hard it tastes like metal.
Across from us, Jack watches without speaking. He isn’t soft. He isn’t anything but the same shape he was on the dock, only inside a van. After a long moment, he nods once. It isn’t permission. It isn’t gratitude. It’s a mark in a ledger that says: she’s back; the price is paid; anyone who tries again won’t leave a body big enough for a box.
