Jack still has my T-shirt fisted in his large, unnaturally strong hand. If he wanted to, he could rip the material from my body with one sharp yank. The look in his eyes says he knows it too, shouts he wants it, wants me. His gaze snaps to my lips, and he jerks me forward again with painful abruptness to press one last lingering kiss to my mouth.
When Jack pulls back this time, he rests his forehead lightly against mine and lets go of my T-shirt. He moves his hand up to my throat, squeezing it lightly, like it's a reminder of exactly who and what he is. Then he cups my face in a gentle grip as if to offset his previous roughness. His thumb brushes over my cheekbone, breath hot but not heaving like mine. My heart feels like it's hammering out a static rhythm inside my chest.
One of my hands is still covering his on top of the case of money, and I feel compelled to turn it around under his so I can thread our fingers together. Jack's eyes are open and glimmering like gemstones set in the path of direct sunlight. His focus on me is so intense I feel like a bottle full of freshly caught lightning, ready to fly apart and fill the truck with a spray of glass and plasma.
I need to calm the hell down.
"We're in this together, then? That what you're sayin', Leo?" Jack is looking at me with hope that borders on madness, like he wants so desperately for it to be true, to believe me, to believeinme. He strokes my cheek again, pressing in just a little bit harder with his thumb. "Fuck everyone else, yeah? We get this thing done, whatever it takes."
"Right,” I agree, pushing my forehead into his and bringing my free hand up to knock on his chest once, twice, then three times. It's a gesture I learnt from my cousin Rex. A signal of trust, of connection. It's meant to be between family, but I figure it can work for me and Jack too. He's my partner. He's more mine than he is anyone else's although I'm not sure he'd appreciate me saying so.
Jack seems placated by my answer, even more so than I would have thought. He seems to understand the knocking gesture as something significant despite not knowing what it means.
"Okay, we'd better go before Bullet starts thinking we're plotting against him or some shit," Jack says, dragging himself away from me with obvious reluctance. I think it's safe to say we'd both rather drive the hell away from here and make another terrible decision by having sex in another safe house. I'm not getting my kit off in the jungle; he can forget that. There are snakes and spiders and other random wildlife fuckery.
"Well, we kind ofareplotting against him," I point out whilst conceding to his actual point by disentangling us and moving to open my car door.
"Nah." Jack snorts, his mouth pulling into a tight frown. "We'd be plotting against him if we planned to torture the information out of him and put a bullet in his brain afterwards."
"Not much of a plan," I comment doubtfully. "It's only got two steps."
"I'm a simple man who just wants to shoot a motherfucker in the head." Jack waves a hand at me. "You want to be all fancy with the strategy, you come up with that shit solo."
Jack gets out of the car before I can respond, slamming the door behind him with more aggression than is probably warranted. Evidently, not all of the tension has been bled out of him with my reassurances that we're a team in this, and that he doesn't have to fight this fight on his own. Whatever's going to come from this meeting with Bullet, I refuse to let Jack face the horrors of his past alone.
On our way up to the entrance of Bullet's compound, I spot six cameras, both on the building itself and in the surrounding trees. They were able to watch us arriving from every possible angle.
Jack stays close to my side, the case of money clutched in one hand, his ingrained ability to scrutinise his surroundings with hawk-like precision working at full capacity as he takes it all in, scanning the area for possible threats and pre-planning exit strategies. From the look of things, there could be a countless number of the first and very few of the second.
Confirming my thoughts about being watched, the door to the compound is opened before we reach it.
A heavily armed man, dressed in black and wearing a classically stoic expression, stands in the doorway. The very large fuck-off gun strapped to him looks modified, which is a Bullet staple according to his file. One of the reasons he's been able to stay on top of the arms-dealing business is his penchant for selling heavily modified weapons, most of which are created by would-be and soon-to-be supervillains.
Jack stares down the heavily armed man, curling his lip at the modified weapon as if looking at it offends him in some way. The armed man stares back at Jack with impassive calculation, assessing him and his aggression level, possibly trying to decide how likely it is that Jack will pop off at some point and make his job of protecting Titanus Bullet more strenuous. There's recognition in the man's eyes, suggesting he's at least seen Jack before if not met him officially.
"Back again, psycho?" the armed man rumbles out in a dry voice, his pale, indifferent eyes boring into Jack. “Heard you’d gone traitor and defected to the British government.” He sounds both mocking and contemptuous.
Jack makes a low sound of disgust, and I swear he'd be hocking a mouthful of spit at Bullet's man if I weren't there. I'm certain he's only keeping control of himself for my sake. It's both reassuring and a concern because I have no idea how far my presence will go to deter such volatile reactions from him.
"Good to see you too, Commander." Jack's mouth slashes up into something mean, his tone scathing. "Remind me again why the military kicked you out on your defective arse? Was it the mass murder of civilians without orders or the rampant assault of sex workers on foreign soil?"
The armed man's eyes flash with rage, his face reddening with such speed and severity I'm afraid his head might explode. His hands clench around his gun, like he might turn it on us just for that. Jesus Christ. There must be some truth to what Jack said for him to react so viscerally.
To cut off any unpleasantness before it can erupt, I step forward to speak. Jack tenses up even more at my side, a feat I didn't think possible, but he doesn't try to stop me.
"My name is Agent Leo Snow." I tilt my head in Jack's direction. "This is my partner,AgentJack Roth. I believe your boss is expecting us to discuss an exchange."
The armed man stares a little longer, the pause drawing out for a few uncomfortable seconds before he eventually responds, "Yes, come with me, and I'll take you to him,AgentSnow." Then he turns around and walks off without waiting to see if we’ll chase after him.
Jack makes a rough, growling sound of anger, shooting daggers at the man's back. He allows me to nudge him into following Bullet's guard into the compound and down a series of barren corridors until we reach what could pass as the living room of a Bond villain.
The inside of Bullet's compound looks almost as much like a prison as the outside. Every wall is made of solid grey stone, and there are small, circular lights fixed into the walls and ceilings, shining the way through it like a macabre yellow-brick road, or to be more melodramatic, the road to hell. There's a claustrophobic feel to the corridors, like they're slowly closing in and might crush you if you stay in the same place for too long.
At the end of the last corridor, the building opens up into a moderately large room containing an electric fireplace, two expensive-looking white sofas set on either side of a big glass coffee table, and multiple rugs, one a fluffy white and another the skin of a white tiger. Because billionaire arms-dealing Bond villains justbelike this.
I figure the glass table was either an error on Bullet's part or meant as a direct provocation. If so, Bullet is a moron with a death wish. It's not smart to goad the superhuman assassin, no matter how much protection you have around you.
There's a small army of large, armed men standing at various points throughout the room. Much like the man who answered the door, they're all dressed in black and look equally intimidating in both size and in possessing an undeniable air of competence. If I had to guess, I'd peg most of them as ex-military of some kind. It would make sense for Bullet to hire men who the system spat out due to age, injury, or psychological incapacity. Displaced men with a very particular and non-transferable skillset, who need somewhere to go and a way to make money.
