The Vigilante's Lover #2

by Annie Winters

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1: Mia

  2: Jax

  3: Mia

  4: Jax

  5: Mia

  6: Jax

  7: Mia

  8: Jax

  9: Mia

  10: Jax

  11: Mia

  12: Jax

  13: Mia

  14: Jax

  15: Mia

  16: Jax

  17: Mia

  18: Jax

  19: Mia

  20: Jax

  21: Mia

  22: Jax

  23: Mia

  What's Next - Amazon

  The Vigilante’s Lover

  Volume 2

  By Annie Winters and Tony West

  www.anniewinters.com

  www.tonywestwrites.com

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  AnnieWinters.com

  Summary:

  A small-town girl falls in love with a Vigilante spy who has kidnapped her.

  Copyright © 2015 by Annie Winters and Tony West. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Casey Shay Press

  PO Box 160116

  Austin, TX 78716

  www.caseyshaypress.com

  E-ISBN: 9781938150371

  Also available in paperback: ISBN: 9781938150388

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931046

  eBook version 1

  1: Mia

  Jax’s face pulses red with the alarms going off inside his car.

  An automated female voice announces, “Ten seconds until security breach.”

  I kiss him one more time. This is my only shot at convincing him to keep me. Even if his enemies have us surrounded, I can’t let him forget that.

  His lips are unhurried, as if we’re not in the middle of a disaster. The calm car voice starts counting down how long we have until we’re caught.

  I break the kiss. Jax stares past me out the windshield. Thinking.

  I’m straddling him in the driver’s seat, my skirt hiked up to my waist. I’m a little shocked at my own behavior, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

  My neck tingles. But I don’t think about it for long because Jax’s fingers brush my skin there. No wonder I’m feeling so many sensations.

  The driver’s door is wide open. I can’t see whatever the car’s security says is coming, but I believe it. The technology in this thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

  We’ve escaped the Vigilante stronghold only to be caught by them again. I’m pretty sure they’ll be more careful with us the second time.

  Jax reaches out and closes the door. Then he presses a button on the dash. The motor roars to life. “You might want to hang on,” he says.

  My wet sweater dress clings to me, cold and heavy. I’m not sure what I should hold on to in this position. I shift as if I’m going to switch over to the passenger seat, but then we abruptly shoot forward, and I fall into Jax.

  I’m not going to be able to move now. I flatten my cheek against his chest so he can see around me. My arms snake behind him to wrap around his back.

  Bushes and small trees crunch beneath our tires. We swerve to the right, then the left, a dizzying zigzag. Jax is a Vigilante, part of a powerful underground network of spies and law enforcement. He is skilled, and his car is powerful, but the people coming for us are just as good.

  I bury my face in his wet shirt. We had to jump in a river earlier to escape detection by our heat signatures. Whatever we’re doing, I don’t want to look. The last thing he needs is my silly screams distracting him.

  I hear a strange sound and look up to see a panel in the roof sliding open.

  “Watch out for the console,” Jax says.

  I turn my head toward the inside of the car. Between the two front seats, the padded black leather armrest opens. I pull my elbow in tighter as a silver canister rises up from it.

  “It’s going to shoot out,” he says.

  The word “Crybaby” is scrawled on the side as if someone has written on it with a marker.

  Suddenly the canister rockets up and out the rooftop. Even though I was warned, I have to stifle a yelp of surprise.

  Jax’s arms move around me as he steers, powerful and strong. I steal a glance out the side window. The trees are less dense. I don’t see anyone following us, but the red alarm is still going off. Then the car voice says, “Threat retreating.”

  We bump onto a regular road and the ride is smoother. My knees are killing me in this position, but I don’t know if I should move to my seat. The rooftop closes and the console snaps shut.

  The red light inside the car stops pulsing. I can feel Jax relax beneath me.

  “What was that thing that just shot out of your car?” I ask.

  “Long story,” he says.

  “I have time.” The more we talk, the more sure I feel that he won’t dump me on the side of the road like he had planned.

  “All right. Sam has a thing for that old television show Firefly,” Jax says. “He makes lots of custom modifications to our cars based on things they used in the episodes.”

  “I don’t know that show,” I say.

  “It’s about space cowboys,” he says. “They were always getting into scrapes.”

  “What does the Crybaby do?”

  “In the show it makes a fake distress call,” Jax says. “But Sam’s Crybaby actually jettisons our car identification, so they follow it instead of us.”

  “Your Vigilante friends seem easy to fool,” I say.

  “The person fooling them is a Vigilante himself,” Jax says. He shifts in the seat, adjusting my position on his lap. “The best there is.”

  “Will I get to meet him?” I ask. I hold my breath for the answer.

  “Not unless you want to cost him his job,” he says.

  That told me nothing. I decide it’s probably time to move to my side, even though I don’t want to. I lunge clumsily over to the other seat.

  “You feeling all right?” Jax asks.

  “A little cold, maybe.” Truth be told, I might be a little nauseated from his crazy driving. But I’m not going to tell him that. If I complain the littlest bit, he might ditch me.

  I glance down, grimacing at my pale legs sticking out of the wet red dress, ending in the once-white, now-muddy shoes. I pull the skirt down, embarrassed now at how I hiked it up to straddle Jax and keep him from leaving me in the woods.

  “So this Sam person who made the Crybaby, is he the one who gave you the case of tech tools?” I ask.

  He glances over at me. “You have a good memory for details,” he says.

  I warm over with the compliment, then shiver. I’m starting to feel considerably worse. “Your car doesn’t have a blow-dry setting, does it?”

  It’s not a serious question, but Jax taps a button on the dash.

  “This will work,” he says.

  Hot air blows hard on my face. I turn my head, trying to get my hair less dripping wet. Our leap into a river means I look like a drowned rat.

  Despite all its fancy tech, this car still has a normal pull-down visor, presumably with a mirror on the back side. I lower it to assess my appearance. Probably Jax isn’t terribly attracted to wet, shivering
, bad-haired women.

  I’m surprised to see what appears to be an ordinary mirror compartment and light. I slide the panel to reveal the mirror, then blink as a green light scans my face.

  “Female companion,” a voice says, and dims the bulb to a more flattering brightness.

  I laugh. “Really? All your important getaway gadgets, and the only thing your mirror does is make me feel better about myself?”

  “You might want to close that within thirty seconds,” Jax says casually.

  I snap my focus back to the mirror. I see a tiny red light blinking in the corner. Is it a weapon? Something to incapacitate a passenger? Or kill them?

  My fingers fly to shove the panel back in place.

  Jax laughs. “I was just kidding.”

  I hunker down in my seat. “I can’t trust you for anything.”

  “Seeing as I tied you up before we even met properly, I’d say that is a fair assessment of our relationship.”

  I pull at the wet dress, still sticking to my skin. I’m not sure where we stand now. Jax finally seems to recognize that I’m not his enemy. His manner is light and easy compared to the rage he shot at me when he thought I’d killed his friend.

  Like I could do anything like that.

  I swallow hard, thinking of that searing kiss. But the sick feeling persists. I can’t banish it even with those hot memories.

  The dress is cloying, cold and clammy. My face feels flushed. “I want to change,” I say.

  “We’re not in any imminent danger,” Jax says. “You can climb in the back.”

  I crawl awkwardly between the seats. My head is pounding. Something in my neck tingles again. I press my hand to the spot, but it feels normal.

  My butt lands awkwardly on the seat, squashing the bag with my other outfits. I try to sort through them and pull out the navy pants, but my vision seems to be failing. Everything is going black and white.

  I manage to pull the dress up and over my head. The red bra and matching thong are also damp, but I’m not going to take those off. I glance up at Jax and catch his eyes on me in the rearview mirror. He doesn’t break his stare just because I see him looking. His riveting attention is unnerving.

  I flush with heat again. I’m tempted to take the bra off after all, just to taunt him. My belly flutters at the thought of being so forward, so bold.

  Then the sick feeling comes back full force. I manage to cry out, “Jax!” before everything goes totally dark.

  2: Jax

  Shit.

  I’m watching Mia get undressed, that glorious body revealed again, when she suddenly passes clean out.

  They got her. I suspected it.

  I glance at the display on the dash. The majority of the Vigilantes are still clustered around the Crybaby, but several have strayed away. Two are following my path, out of luck or awareness of my position, I don’t know.

  Anything in this car could be tipping them off, and now I have a poisoned woman to deal with.

  I saw the dart hit her neck when she was on my lap. I knew it was meant for me. I pulled it from her instantly, but apparently the injection system has improved during my time in Ridley Prison. There was no delay at all.

  I have about seven minutes until it kills her.

  I check the distance of the blips again, and scan the landscape for a safe location to pull off the road. It will do me no good to stop for the antidote if I immediately get stalled by Vigilantes. By the time I can fight or talk my way back to Mia, it will be too late.

  I jerk the wheel to cut down a narrow driveway that looks like it might lead to a single residence. The density of the trees on either side of the path obscures whatever might be at the end of it.

  Based on the condition of the fencing, the place is either abandoned or inhabited by elderly people who can no longer keep it up. All good things.

  As soon as I’m out of sight of the road, I slam on the brakes and jump out the door and into the backseat.

  Which poison is it? I press my fingers to Mia’s neck. Her breaths are slow and shallow, her pulse fluttery. Has to be respiratory, as the neurological one causes spasms.

  I’m torn on what to do next. Dismantle anything Vigilante to avoid detection, or go straight for the vials of antidotes and try to figure out which one to try?

  I check the display. The blips still show the Vigilantes’ approach. Until they pass the drive I turned down, I won’t know if they are on to me. I can’t risk them coming. I still have five solid minutes for Mia.

  I race to the front seat of the car, powering down all the transmitters, jerking open the glove compartment and pulling out the wires powering all the systems that were custom-fitted by Sam. I assume that even though I jettisoned the Crybaby and our identity chips, the Vigilantes scanned all the tech in the car when it was abandoned and can follow it.

  That done, I race to the trunk and tear through everything in it. I power off every detector, all the security features, and then take apart anything with a power source.

  Now we should be black, emitting nothing but body heat signatures that aren’t easily tracked by their moving vehicles. At the same time, without any tech, I won’t know they’re coming if they do. The entire system is down.

  But never mind that. I have to go for the vials. I open the side compartment to the black valise Sam left for me. Inside are five syringes. I can’t just use them all. The antidotes are as bad as the poisons themselves if I use the wrong one.

  I think through them carefully, glad now that I took the time on the original drive to Mia’s house to listen to Sam’s rundown of the contents of the car. The blue vial is for the neurological dart, which I ruled out. The red one is a digestive one, a painful torture poison that would have made her sick before she passed out. Yellow is a snuff dart, which is rarely used. This vial isn’t an antidote. It chemically alters the poison in their system to hide what you did. Mia would already be dead if they’d used this one.

  The last two are powerful drugs meant to incapacitate prior to the kill. I don’t believe for a minute they just sedated her. Vigilantes stationed on the perimeters of silos don’t even carry anything that isn’t lethal. The seven-minute time span means they can save you if they want to.

  But which one? Green or white?

  I snatch them both and head to the backseat. Dilated pupils. That will tell me. One of the poisons will affect your eyes. The other won’t.

  I lean in close to Mia and take her head in my hand. Her honey hair spills down, dark and wet from the river water. My throat is tight as I push on her eyelids to check her pupils. The blacks are normal sized inside her green irises.

  I lay her down more comfortably on the seat and pick up the white vial. I’m sure that dart was probably meant for me. Whoever aimed the shot should be downgraded to floor-mopping duty. Vigilantes should never miss their target.

  I tug the cap off the needle and stick Mia gently in the crook of her arm. When the syringe is empty, I recap it and look outside the car. If the Vigilantes are truly tracking me, they will arrive any second.

  I wait, counting heartbeats, for either Mia to wake up or a car to bear down on us.

  Neither happens.

  I lay my head on Mia’s chest, listening. Her heartbeat is less rapid, but her respiration is still slow, too slow. The dart contained more than her slender body could handle. The dose was meant for me.

  Damn it. I peer up the driveway. There’s a structure just visible around a bend. I pull an oversized shawl from Mia’s clothing bag and cover her with it. Then I get back behind the wheel and slowly ease the car down the lane.

  I assess my own emotional state as we move. I’m more anxious than I should be. I’ve lost my own cold control.

  Calming breaths. Stay alert and prepared.

  I’m vulnerable, I know, with all my tech disabled. But I just waltzed out of a Vigilante silo with nothing more than a universal passkey. I’m up for this.

  It’s the girl. She’s setting off a buzz inside me that
doesn’t respond to my training. I want to protect her, keep her safe. And right now, I’ve failed at that.

  We pull up in front of an old farmhouse. It’s definitely abandoned, the front door hanging from its frame. I drive around behind it to hide the car. Farmland that has been encroached upon by brush and small trees stretches as far as I can see. To my left is a barn that looks like it is in good shape. I’ll move the car in there once I know Mia is all right.

  I kill the car and turn to check on her. Still out, but I’m reassured by the rise and fall of her chest beneath the shawl.

  I debate leaving her in the car while I investigate the house and make it secure. But I can’t do it. If the Vigilantes do wander down this drive, they’ll take her. And if she has some unexpected reaction to the poison or the antidote, I want to be there.

  The house is two stories. The back steps look solid. The open front door might actually be a suitable ruse, making the house look empty. I just need to secure one of the rooms.

  I walk to the back of the car and lift Mia into my arms. The shawl falls away, revealing the creamy skin again. She shivers, which I take as an excellent sign. I tuck the shawl around her and pull her close.

  One swift kick at the back door pops it open. The kitchen is dirty but intact. One exit leads to an empty dining room. Another goes to a hall and straight to the open front door. Not secure at all. I turn past the stairs to check and see if there is a bedroom downstairs, but there is only an empty room with a splintered wall piano and an old armchair losing its stuffing.

  This is no good. I roll Mia into me and peer out the front window. Still no sign of anyone.

  I return to the kitchen and out the back door. Mia starts to stir, taking in a sudden sharp breath. I pause by the car, looking down at her. Her eyelids flutter but don’t open.

  She’s coming out of it.