Page 155 of Everything That Kills Me
Jack chuckled.
“So what are you planning?” Zeph asked. “Walk around London to see if anyone shoots you? Go to Paris for a week and do the same? Then every other place where there might be someone out to get you? Don’t you see that being sure might never be possible? Don’t leave me again. I want to drag you out of your darkness and keep you in the light. Take a chance on me.”
“Give me five days. There are things I need to do.”
Zeph’s heart sank but he made sure he didn’t show that on his face. He nodded. “Then you’ll come back and talk to me?”
“I promise. Don’t look for another job.”
Don’t sayyet.
Zeph waited and he didn’t.
Forty-Two
Jack spent five long, difficult days away from Zeph. Contrary to what Zeph had said, Jack wasn’t making himself a target, but he did want to tidy up loose ends, undoing his old life as far as he could, as far as he dare risk.
When he knocked on the door of Thomas’s house in Aversham, he heard Django barking. Thomas didn’t even look surprised when he saw Jack standing there, though he’d probably had him under observation from a mile or so away.
“And I didn’t even have to roll back a stone to find you miraculously resurrected,” Jack said.
“Want a coffee?”
“Lunch, please. Cheese sandwich will do. No—”
“No pickle. I do remember.”
Django greeted him as if he was the person in the world he most wanted to see, then raced off to beg cheese from Thomas.
Jack was torn between relief Thomas was there in one piece, and annoyance that he’d pulled the stunt in the first place. Thomas made himself a sandwich too and put the plates on the kitchen table. Jack pulled out a chair and sat.
“How did you know I’d be here?” Thomas asked.
“I didn’tknow.I was pretty sure you’d think I’d assume you wouldn’t go back to any of your houses. But you seemed happier here than I’ve seen you before so I took a gamble.” Thomas didn’t need to know this wasn’t the first place he’d looked. “You planned the whole thing? Critical injury? Fake blood?”
“I took a gamble that you’d come into the building to look for me. I just needed you to leave.”
“Yeah, sorry. I was just concerned that a guy who’d been a father to me since I was six years old was bleeding out in front of me. Did it work? Does everyone think you’re dead?”
“Time will tell. No more contracts, no more contact with those who made the jobs possible. That won’t stop some enterprising, pissed-off, vindictive individual from using every means to find me if they think I might be alive.”
Jack chewed his sandwich. “Did you do it for me?”
“In part, but maybe I’d had enough too.” He shrugged. “Knowing you wanted out nudged me in that direction.”
“You always told me there was no way out.”
“There probably isn’t, but I wanted to give you a chance. I protected you as best I could. If they come for anyone, they’ll come for me.”
“You have a gun?”
“Do you need to ask? This place is as well protected as I could make it, but I’m able to defend myself. So…Zeph?”
“Loves me, which is scarier than I’d imagined.”
“Do you love him?”
“If love means it hurts when I consider not having him in my life, when looking at him makes the hairs on my arms stand on end, my heart jump in my chest and the breath catch in my throat? If those moments are love? Then yes, I love him.”
