The Vigilante's Lover III

by Annie Winters

I need help. Must have help.

  I go back to Jax and slap him again. “You have to tell me what the antidote is!”

  He doesn’t open his eyes.

  I feel his pulse. Still there. Slow, though. Too slow. God.

  I jump in the Aston Martin. The car engine whirs on and the dash lights up.

  “Call Sam the Vigilante,” I say.

  “Mia Morrow is not authorized for that information,” the voice says.

  “But Jax is with me! I used his watch to unlock the door!”

  “Command not understood,” the voice answers. “Please try another command.”

  “Jax wants to call Sam the Vigilante,” I say.

  “Mia Morrow is not authorized for that information,” the voice repeats.

  I bang my hand on the dash. How do I do this?

  His phone.

  I jump back to the Acura and rummage through Jax’s pockets. I pull out the phone, frantically activating the screen. The contacts are empty other than the number for Colt. Colt can’t help now.

  The phone is still tied to the car. I run around and shut off the Acura, praying that when it’s switched off, it will revert to Jax’s normal mode.

  As soon as the engine is down, I pull up the phone again.

  Yes, the contacts are restored.

  But as I scroll through them looking for Sam, I realize they are coded. Shit. I don’t know who anybody is. They’re all numbers.

  I go to the most recent calls. Who are the people on this list?

  I choose the day he left me with Colette and pick a number around that time. Whoever he would have called that day should be safe.

  I punch the number and hold my breath. Please be Sam or Colette. Please. Please. Please.

  Sam’s voice floods me with relief.

  “Jax, this is bad, you just called on an open line,” he says.

  “It’s Mia,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry. Jax has been poisoned and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Switch to video,” he says.

  I find the icon and punch it.

  “Show him to me,” Sam says.

  I turn the phone around.

  “Did he throw up?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Spasms?”

  “No.”

  Sam’s voice is calm. “See if his eyes are dilated. If the pupils are huge.”

  I reach down and carefully tug his eyelids apart. “Yes, I think so.” I hold the camera up.

  “This is important,” Sam says. “If you choose the wrong one, he dies.”

  I open his lids again.

  “Compare them to your own in this light,” he instructs.

  I pull back and stare into the side door mirror. “His are definitely bigger.”

  “I can’t see well enough, but I trust you,” Sam says. “Did you find the vials in the trunk of the car?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Okay. Get the green one.”

  I run to the trunk and jerk the green vial from the case.

  “Where do I stick it?” I ask Sam.

  “Anywhere works, but if you can get him in the arm close to his heart, that’s best.”

  I jerk up the sleeve to his white linen shirt and expose the crook of his elbow. That’s where nurses always stick you to take blood. It must be good. I uncap the needle.

  “Just let it go in slow and steady,” Sam says.

  I prick his skin and push the plunger in.

  “Mia,” Sam says. His voice is strained. “You have to get off this phone call and leave there immediately. We’re all in trouble now.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” I kill the call and throw the phone across the parking lot. It lands in a thorny bush. Maybe that will slow them down since they can track it.

  I turn back to Jax. I want to take his car so we can be cloaked, but I can’t move him. He’s starting to stir.

  I lean in. “Jax, baby, if you want to take your car, you have to move. The Vigilantes know where we are.”

  He opens his eyes. He shakes his head, then suddenly he’s all action. He reaches behind the seat and grabs his knapsack. He pauses a moment, staring at the floorboard, and picks up Klaus’s metallic blue gun.

  I back away as he lunges for his car as if he’s going to drive.

  “Oh, no,” I say. “You have to sit in the passenger seat.” I grab his arm. He jerks away, then shakes his head again. I know what he’s going through. I remember this manic phase. I wonder if I should take the gun away.

  I walk him around and open the door. “In,” I order, and he obeys.

  Then I race around the car and jump in.

  I don’t want to go back toward the arena. That seems the most likely place they’ll come from.

  “Cloaking levels one, two, and three,” I tell the car as we bounce over a curb and onto a dark back street.

  “Cloaking initiated,” the woman says.

  “Look at you,” Jax says. “Like you were born to it.”

  I flash him a smile. “You got a Crybaby in this one?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, his hand on his temple. “Just drive away. They can’t track us unless they get a visual. Blend into traffic as soon as you can.”

  I bump along the back road, scanning ahead for a busier street. We zigzag through the neighborhood, then I spot a traffic light. That should intersect with something else.

  “Is it safe to go back to the hotel?” I ask him.

  “Should be, as long as we’re not followed.” He scans the road ahead, then turns and looks behind. “We seem clear.”

  I look over at him and he meets my eyes. “You were great back there,” he says.

  I’m coming down from the horrifying adrenaline rush. “What happened?”

  Jax ruffles his hair. “Klaus poisoned me. Slick new device embedded in prosthetic skin.”

  I grimace. “Sounds disgusting.”

  “It got me.”

  “Do you have people trying to kill you all the time?” I ask.

  He holds the gun in his hand for a moment longer, letting it glint in the passing streetlights, then drops it into his knapsack. As we merge into traffic, he says, “Only once or twice a day.”

  17: Jax

  Probably the only thing worse than dying from a Vigilante poison is surviving it.

  I always imagine that this is what college kids feel like after a night of cheap liquor. Head pounding. Stomach like a punch to the gut. I don’t appreciate feeling weak or slow.

  And Jovana got away. Klaus has admitted to a bigger plot, but for what? I don’t have a next step other than to go for Sutherland himself.

  Which is suicide.

  Mia drives the car with alert attention. The lights passing by light up her face and hair, then she falls into darkness again. She glances at me every few seconds as if to make sure I’m really still alive.

  “I’m not easy to kill,” I assure her.

  “Good thing,” she says. “Because you’re pushing your luck lately.”

  Damn, she’s fun. And clever. And capable.

  “So what happened to you?” I ask.

  “Not much,” she says. “Got trapped in the car. Escaped. Played with firearms.” She keeps her eyes on the road. “Oh, and jumped your ex-girlfriend.”

  “What?” The sound comes out like an explosion.

  She doesn’t flinch, expecting my reaction. Her laugh is musical and light. “She thought I was a crack whore.”

  “She didn’t recognize you?”

  “No.” She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a wad of cash. “She even contributed to my habit.”

  “That’s…odd.”

  “I let her think it. But I did get some information.” She glances at me slyly, pleased with herself. “She’s meeting Sutherland in the Washington office tomorrow evening. She was pretty pissed that you were alive. Apparently she didn’t know.”

  “Interesting.” So they aren’t keeping her in the loop anymore. That’s a promising turn.

  “So are
we going to Washington?” she asks. She seems almost afraid to ask the question.

  “You’re doing better than I am,” I quip. “Maybe I should send you in after them.”

  “Well, I am a special,” she says. “And we’re even now on assassination attempts.”

  “That we are.”

  We’ve crossed a pretty solid section of Nashville now. “I think it’s safe to double back to the hotel,” I tell her.

  “I have no idea where I am,” she says with a laugh. “Should I use the car navigation?”

  “Let’s be old school for now, just in case,” I say. I’m not so naive as to think they can’t track every car that left the arena. But it’s unlikely they’ll get it right. We’ve switched cars, gone cloaked. I press my hand to my empty pocket. “Where is my phone?”

  “Oh, that,” she says. “Sam said it was compromised, so I tossed it.”

  Hopefully he’ll wipe it remotely, if he can. “It was smart to call him like that.”

  “And not easy.” Her voice is hard. “This mean car never lets me connect to anybody.”

  “Voice recognition,” I say. “It’s a good system, mostly. You did well.”

  She smiles at the compliment. “So, Mr. Jax the Vigilante, what are we going to do tonight? Head on to Washington?” She tilts her head.

  “Turn left up here,” I tell her. “I think another night at the hotel is in order.”

  She bites her lip as she maneuvers the car. My body starts to right itself, my head clearing.

  We’ll buy ourselves one more easy night. Then back into the fray we go.

  18: Mia

  We’re no more in the room than Jax falls back on the bed. “I think the poisons are getting more intense,” he says. “Even if they save you, they want you to suffer.”

  I can agree about that. I find it amusing that we have this in common, being struck down by the Vigilantes. Well, funny other than the part where we were, in fact, poisoned.

  Everything in the room is immaculate, our clothes clean and folded or hanging. I rummage through the suitcases Armond sent to us, looking for something to sleep in. I find a midnight-blue baby-doll negligee and take it out with trepidation.

  Jax perks up at this. “Don’t plan to wear that for long.”

  I clutch the bit of lace to my chest. “Should I bother?”

  He tucks his hands behind his head. “Definitely.”

  I toss it at him. “You’re feeling better,” I say.

  He lets it hit his face. “Mmmm,” he says. “It smells nice.” He shakes his head and lets it fall. “It will smell better on you.”

  This makes me flush. This sort of banter isn’t something I’m used to yet. The vast gap between his experience and mine feels like an ocean.

  And then there was my altercation with Jovana. She is his most recent ex-lover, even if it has been a year.

  A forced year.

  I sit on the bed next to him. “It was a little strange, meeting this Jovana woman,” I admit.

  He turns to me, leaning on his elbow. “Did you get a good blow in? To defend my honor?”

  I laugh. “If only. But I did kick the hell out of her fancy purse.”

  Jax growls and wraps an arm around my waist. “Come here, my sweet little badass.” He drags me down to the bed.

  I stare up at him. He seems none the worse for wear for having been poisoned an hour ago. But then, I guess, an hour after I was poisoned, we were in the barn, I was naked, and his hands were…

  About where they’re going now.

  His fingers slide up my rib cage. I let out a long, slow breath for the first time since Jax stumbled out that back door and crashed into the concrete. I realize that he’s meaning a lot to me. I think back to the last days in my aunt’s house, pining for him. And I had no idea what was to come.

  Everything has been even better than I could have imagined. I had no clue.

  His blue-gray eyes fix on mine. “Tell me about your fear of guns.”

  I go still. I didn’t anticipate this. “I just have this strong reaction to them,” I say.

  “Your aunt didn’t have any around?” Even as he asks this, his hand trails along my spine, sending a tingle up my body.

  “Not that I knew about.” I hesitate. He probably knows about the ones in the stash. “But I found the case of them under the floor in the pantry.”

  “When you destroyed the floor.” His face shows a trace of amusement.

  “Once I figured out that the shoes would open the trapdoor.”

  “Clever.”

  “I wasn’t going to get it open any other way. I tried hacking it.”

  “Is that when you found the ring? I was surprised to find you brought it with you when you escaped Klaus.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Something about it made me keep it.”

  He moves away from me, and I wish I hadn’t asked, my body aching for him to touch me again.

  Jax goes to the knapsack that he dropped on a chair when we came in. He pulls out the black oval ring. “It’s an odd thing to have in a safe house.”

  “It doesn’t do anything, as far as I can tell,” I say. “I guess you saw it that first night?” I shiver a little, thinking about waking up to Jax at the end of my bed. I knew, even then, that something incredible was happening.

  Jax sits on the bed, holding the ring in his palm. “I think it’s just a plain ring. It doesn’t set off any sensors on any equipment. It looks old.”

  I take it from him and slide it on my thumb. “I wonder how it ended up in our stash.”

  “No telling,” Jax says. “You seem to like it.”

  “I do.” I take it off and turn it over. Inside, the initials KHS are engraved. “I wonder whose initials these are,” I say.

  “No telling. There are no Vigilantes that match them. I checked.”

  “Really? You were that curious?”

  His eyes watch me steadily. “I was trying to find out the secrets of your safe house.”

  I pick up his hand and slide the ring on his finger. “It’s a good fit for you.”

  He holds it out like a woman examining a diamond, and I burst into giggles.

  “Does it make my fingers look fat?” he asks.

  God, I’m dying. Jax? Playful? It didn’t seem possible any time before.

  I snatch up the blue negligee. “I guess I should put this on,” I say.

  The air seems to crackle between us. “I’d say definitely, yes,” he agrees.

  I pick it up and head into the bathroom.

  I close the door and lean against it. My stomach is turning somersaults. I’m so lost. I want him by me all the time.

  I’ve totally fallen for this man.

  And yet, we’re in so much danger. I don’t see how we can get out of this. The Vigilantes seem at our heels every moment. So many close calls. Poisons. Bombs.

  I turn to the giant mirrors surrounded with movie-star bulbs, like I’m in a dressing room at a film studio. I peel off the MMA T-shirt and jeans.

  My hair falls in soft waves on my shoulders, probably due to the fancy shampoo and conditioner Armond sent. My life is such a strange seesaw of fairy tale and horror flick.

  Probably there is a matching bottom to this filmy top somewhere in the suitcases, but it’s too late to go looking for it now. Thankfully my underwear is also blue, so it works all right with the negligee.

  I take off my bra, feeling sort of in awe that Armond nailed the fit on that, and tug the top over my head. It flutters down like a wedding veil, and about as transparent. This outfit hides nothing at all.

  I take a deep breath and put my hand on the doorknob. I wonder what Jax is thinking of this time. Ropes? The tickler? Something new? I feel a rush of heat just thinking about it. I don’t know how I fell into the hands of a man like Jax De Luca, but I am so grateful that I did.

  I open the door, trying not to feel shy in the outfit.

  Jax looks up, his eyes appreciative on my body.

  He’s naked on t
he bed, his skin glowing in the soft light.

  And in his lap, he holds a gun.

  19: Jax

  Mia takes a step back into the bathroom when she sees the gun.

  I wait for her to ask about it, although I have to stifle a visible reaction to her appearance in that sheer bit of fabric. I’ve seen Mia in a lot of states of dress, ripped nightgown, naked in ropes in a field, and wearing a red thong and nothing else in a barn.

  But this?

  She’s like the completion of a picture. The gold doorframe surrounds her in the blue negligee. The room is exquisite and formal, and she fits it as though it was all put here just for her.

  The curve of her breasts is outlined by the sheer blue. I want to toss the gun and just take her, but I know what she needs, where we have to go to help her lose her fear.

  “Why do you have that?” Mia asks. She tries to put a hard edge in her voice, but the waver at the end gives her away.

  “You have a fear of guns,” I say. “We need to get you past that.”

  “It’s a good fear,” she says. “Guns kill people. You said it yourself. There’s no antidote to a bullet.” She glances down at the handle. “Especially those.”

  “It’s not my weapon of choice,” I say. And it’s true. “But we will have them pointed at us on a daily basis, in this line of work.” I lift the gun, remove the magazine, and clear the chamber. I set the bullets on the bedside table.

  She comes forward with trepidation, watching the magazine as if it might leap back into the gun.

  “Come sit,” I say.

  She obeys me, propping anxiously on the edge of the bed. I double-check the chamber, then place the gun in her lap. Her eyes lock on to the gleaming metal. She doesn’t move to hold it.

  “Give me your wrists,” I say.

  When she looks up at me, her eyes widen at the length of dark pink rope in my hand. Then they go back to the gun.

  I move to stand in front of her. She lifts her hands up. The gun starts to slide down her lap, and she yelps and lifts her knees.

  “Good, good,” I tell her. I wrap the rope around both her wrists in smooth, even turns. Then I create a whipping knot between them. They are lashed together like handcuffs now.

  Her eyes don’t leave the gun. I pick it up from her lap and pull on the end of the rope, lifting her hands above her head. The movement makes a delicious shift in her breasts, those pert nipples rising, straining against the blue film of the fabric.