She took the bag inside the shower stall with her. Her clothes might get a little damp, but she couldn’t let it out of her sight. The bag was waterproof, though, so she hoped she’d have dry, clean clothes to wear when she finished.
It was a lot cleaner than she’d expected, but at this point she wouldn’t have cared how filthy the place, so long as it had running water. Not only did it have running water, but it had hot, pulsating streams of running water. She stood under the shower with her face upturned, letting the water beat some of the dust and dirt out of her hair before she shampooed it.
She felt just a little guilty. Vax wouldn’t leave the car, or their reluctant passenger, even to use the bathroom, so he was missing out on the shower. She washed her hair and then grabbed the body wash and started scrubbing every last inch of her skin. She had dirt and grass stains smudged on her hands and arms from when she’d hit the ground. Until she’d looked in the mirror in the bathroom, she’d had no idea just how bad she looked.
And she’d gone into gas stations looking like this. She grimaced and rinsed off the body wash. “I bet that made an impression.”
She knew she had felt grimy—she just hadn’t realized how very grimy she was.
“You had other things on your mind.” Like the werewolf in her trunk and the witch in her front seat. The most disturbing thing, though, was that the witch was bothering her a lot more than the werewolf was.
Jess hadn’t realized just how absolutely wonderful clean clothes were until she was pulling on the black yoga pants she wore when she worked out. The sports bra and form-fitting black T-shirt followed, and then she finished towel drying her hair.
She tossed the ruined pajamas into the garbage can and repacked her gym bag. She left the bathroom feeling almost normal. Even a little hungry. The truck stop had one of those travel stores with anything and everything that a person who lived on the road might need.
Including clothes.
Considering how the guy liked to eat, she doubted the junk food that filled the store was going to do much for him, so she went to the café-style food area and bought him a twelve-inch meatball sub, a salad, some chips, and a couple of cookies. She grabbed some apples for herself and hit the clothes section. After finding some jeans that looked like they might fit Vax, Jess grabbed two pair and a plastic package of black T-shirts. There was a small selection of underwear, but for some reason she couldn’t quite see him as the tighty-whitey kind of guy. She did grab some socks for him, though.
She ended up having to get a basket to carry everything to the front of the small travel store, but the cashier didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. Jess figured they had a lot of people come through who had to buy everything but the kitchen sink from this place.
Vax looked a little surprised when she dumped the bag of clothes into his lap. “I figure once we get back on the road, we’ll find someplace where you can change by the car without getting arrested for indecent exposure.”
He smiled a little. “Thanks.”
As she rooted through the bag for his food, she looked in her rearview mirror. “She making any noise?”
Vax shrugged. “Just a little. The silver’s making her weak. She feels pretty groggy.”
Jess arched a brow. “She tell you that?”
He tapped a finger to his temple and said, “She didn’t have to.” He gave her an appraising look. “I’m kind of surprised you aren’t picking up anything from her. I thought you said your psychic gift was weak. That wasn’t a weak call I felt last night.”
“It is. I was terrified last night—you know what terror does to psychic gifts.” She handed him the plastic bag holding his sub and the rest of his food, and then she pulled her apple out of the bag. She set it on the console while she started the car and pulled out. She breathed a little more easily as they left the truck stop, and all those helpless, clueless people, behind them. Before taking a bite of her apple, she glanced at him. “I don’t think I said thank you.”
“Sure you did. When I was worried I might tear up your leather, you told me we could call it even if I got you through this alive.” He grinned a little as he ripped the wrapper off his sub. “So you decided living isn’t so bad, huh?”
“I can’t get Masters if I’m dead,” she said softly.
“You don’t really want to die, Jess. There’s too much life inside you.”
At that moment, she could easily hate him. Life? She felt dead inside. She’d felt like this for so long. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, pal.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t realize that was what I was doing. Just telling you what I see when I look at you.” He was quiet for a few minutes as he polished off half of the sandwich.
“You handle yourself well. Hard to believe you’re only human.” He skimmed his fingers down her temple and mused, “Even if you do have something extra behind those pretty eyes. You’re strong, you’re smart. You also taste pretty damn good.” He touched her mouth lightly, and Jess felt her heart skip a beat or two. “You’ve got the prettiest eyes. I don’t like to think about seeing them lifeless.”
Her throat felt tight. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing wanted to come out except a couple of weird little hiccouping sounds. Okay, compliments hadn’t ever impressed her much. How come one coming from him left her temporarily speechless?
Jess cleared her throat and was finally able to speak. “Would you stop acting like you found me standing on a chair with a rope around my neck?”
His hand settled possessively over the back of her neck, which didn’t do much to help clear her clouded mind. “Just don’t go using me as a means to an end, not if you don’t plan on walking away from this.” He squeezed lightly and then pulled his hand away.
Foil crinkled, and Jess watched out of the corner of her eye as Vax popped a potato chip into his mouth. He chewed slowly, his eyes staring straight ahead. “You know, I’ve been thinking. There are some people I need to talk to. We need to figure out what to do about our friend. They might be able to help.”
Jess wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Friend?” Well, shit. She sounded bright. The weak thump on the trunk of the car jerked her back into reality. Back to the reality where she had a monster in her trunk that wanted to bleed her. “Oh.” She heaved out a sigh and rubbed her temple. A vivid flash from the past night leaped before her eyes—obsidian black claws and cold, hungry eyes. “So what do we do? Are we going to drive and see them?”
“Well, since I’m not sure where they are, that wouldn’t be very practical. We’ll find a place to stay, then I’ll track them down.”
“What do we do until then?” If she could have taken the question back, she would have done it. His eyes dropped to study her mouth, and a wicked grin curved his lips. She could feel the blood rushing to heat her cheeks—and elsewhere. That grin of his had a bad effect on her. It made her feel too hot and too hungry. Dangerous. He could make her forget anything and everything. “Damn it, would you at least pretend to focus? Shouldn’t we try to find out where she came from?”
“Hey, I am focused. I’m talented, blondie. I can focus on the problem we have in the trunk and still focus on you.” Vax shrugged his shoulders, his attention shifting away from her. Irritation and frustration colored his voice as he said, “Besides, I’ve already tried that. The last time I saw a were like her, I spent weeks trying to track her and found nothing but dead ends.”
There was another thump from the trunk, this one weaker. Still, for some odd reason, it formed a leaden weight in her belly.
The memory flash that Jess had picked up from the wolf-woman started to do a little tango through her mind. Thomas holding out a syringe as he stared at the woman in the cell and he said, You still can’t make the full shift, can you? How did the moon feel last night, Dena?
Jess’s mouth had gone dry. She swallowed against the knot in her throat and licked her lips nervously. “Maybe you didn’t know where to start.”
“That hasn’t changed.
I still don’t know where to start. And I don’t think that is going to help us.” He shifted his gaze toward the trunk before leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
Dena. Her name was Dena. And whatever was going on with that woman had something to do with the syringe Thomas had been holding. Jess’s belly felt queasy as angry little butterflies of anxiety started jumping around. She rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth. “I think I know where to start.”
He flicked a glance at her. She didn’t exactly feel that look was a vote of confidence. “Look, I’m sure you’ve got a whole smorgasbord of witches, vamps, weres, and whatnot. You can all get together and sit down in some dark, secret room, and brood over the fate of the universe. That’s just fine. But…” Her voice trailed off. Damn it, why was she wasting her time? She was an investigative reporter trying to kill the man who’d killed her sister, and so far she hadn’t been able to get even a good look at him.
This guy was a Hunter. He knew what he was doing.
She almost just shut up. Almost.
If that image she’d gotten from Dena was worth anything, Jess had a weird feeling they were in trouble. She made her voice sound a lot more certain than she felt. “Thomas.”
He didn’t say anything. The guy had a way of saying a thousand words with just one look. She bet those looks also tended to make people run off at the mouth. She was feeling a case of babbling coming on. In effort to keep the babbling to a minimum, she clamped her lips shut and drove.
TOUGH little cookie, aren’t you?
After she’d said that one word, just a name, Jess had fallen silent and continued to drive on down the small country highway like she didn’t have a care in the world.
She had showered and changed at the truck stop. Her hair was still damp, and he could smell the faint tropical scent of shampoo. The pants she wore clung to her hips, butt, and thighs like a second skin, outlining her subtle curves. Despite what he had told her, he was having a hard time focusing on anything else. Although he knew he had more pressing issues at hand, the only one he could think about was how to find a way around this one—by pressing his body to hers and easing the hunger that burned through him.
From the trunk, he heard their passenger moving around sluggishly. She pounded once on the lid and then fell silent. Vax knew this wasn’t going to last too long. It was just a matter of time, and they needed to be someplace a lot more secure before she woke up.
Which meant he really did need to focus on the job and not on how nice Jessica Warren’s ass looked in a pair of snug black pants.
“Thomas.”
When he spoke, she looked over at him, one pale blonde brow lifting.
“What about Thomas?”
Jess gave a short, concise explanation—he could see why the hell she’d decided to become a reporter. As she laid out the details of that little vision, she never once hesitated; her voice never rose, never changed rhythm. She seemed completely unaffected by it. She might as well have been giving a weather report. Vax, on the other hand, was.
Profoundly, disturbingly affected.
He knew she kept dismissing her psychic skills. But even if she did pick this up out of a rush of fear-induced adrenaline, her psychic ability wasn’t one to be discounted. He blew out a breath and forced himself to think. Sounded like some sort of lab. And Thomas Fitzpatrick, was he a doctor?
“What was in the syringe?”
Finally her face showed some expression. The kind that displayed extreme sarcasm. “Gee, I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask while I was trying to pull myself out of her memories.”
Vax hadn’t realized just how much he had always relied on his Empathy to read people. Her shields were damned good. He got about as much off her as he’d get off a brick wall. That poker face of hers didn’t help any, either. A little irritated, Vax draped an arm against the door, beating out a tattoo with his fingers. “Anything else?”
Jess shrugged restlessly. “No. Climbing inside somebody else’s thoughts is a bit of a new experience. Mom and Randi were the only ones I’ve ever been able to pick up anything from, and then I usually had to be really close to them physically, or they had to be upset.”
She turned her head, but not before he caught a glimpse of the sadness in her eyes. Her voice was muffled as she spoke. “Look, don’t go reading much into this. I picked it up at random. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how reliable it is. It could just be a figment of my overactive imagination—I haven’t ever woken up before in the middle of the night to find some monster in my room.” She smiled sadly. “Mom and Dad used to tease me about my imagination. Mom would say that with my imagination, I ought to write a book. Maybe that’s all it was, my imagination working overtime because a monster scared me out of my sleep.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
She scowled. “No. No, I don’t. I sure as hell wish I did, though.”
He didn’t blame her. “How are you so certain she’s a monster?” Vax knew, but that was because he could feel the vibes coming off her. Their guest wasn’t a happy camper. There was a gut-deep sense of rage inside the wolf-creature, and something that could only be described as evil.
Jess shivered a little, as if she were cold. The cool, implacable look on her face cracked, and he saw underneath, just for a second. Just long enough for him to see that she wasn’t as unflappable as she wanted him to think. “I felt it when I took my little trip through her mind. Even before Thomas got his hands on her, she wasn’t Girl Scout material. I think that’s part of why they took her. But she’s not the only one.”
Silence fell. But it was a heavy kind of silence. Vax’s mind spun back to the alley. Just hours ago. Jess had shoved a file at him, one full of images of women who’d been killed in terrible ways.
Not just women. Witches.
“The missing women.”
Jess swallowed. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. She glanced towards him, and he saw a world of fear in her eyes. “I’m afraid so.”
CHAPTER 8
“YUCK.” Jess came awake with a jerk at the sound of the strange voice. She sat up in bed, her heart slamming against her ribs. She jumped out of the narrow cot, but the rough wool blanket tangled around her legs and she ended up fighting to get free of it instead of backing away from the voice.
When she finally kicked the blanket away, she had scrapped the idea of retreating.
The slender blonde standing in the doorway looked like a Kewpie doll—all curly blonde hair, big blue eyes, and peaches-and-cream skin. Her hair looked like one of those highlight jobs that cost a couple hundred dollars. People didn’t have hair like that without chemical help, did they? Sunny gold, pale blonde, warm brown, all mixed together in a tumble of curls that fell past her shoulders.
She wore a worn-out sweatshirt that was probably three sizes too big and some of those skinny-legged jeans that didn’t look good on 99.9 percent of the population.
Of course, they looked good on the Kewpie doll.
Jess decided right on the spot that she didn’t like her. Both of them were skinny, but on this woman it looked good. She had that fragile, delicate look to her. Jess was too damned tall ever to look fragile or delicate.
“Who in the hell are you?” Jess demanded.
The woman arched her brows. They were the deepest shade of blonde possible without being brown. She stared at Jess guilelessly and said, “Me? I could ask the same of you. Vax, this isn’t very smart, leaving her alone in here with that.”
Vax appeared in the doorway, standing behind the cute little blonde. He had a look of irritation on his face. “Didn’t I tell you to wait?”
The woman blinked, and then a smile canted up the corners of her mouth. “Why, yes. I believe you did.” She continued to stare at Jess, head tilted to the side. A puzzled frown replaced the smile. “What are you?”
Jess reached up and scrubbed her hands over her face. It didn’t help. She still felt half asleep. “Vax, what in the hell i
s going on? Who’s the kid?”
“Nessa. Move.”
The blonde glanced over her shoulder at Vax and then sauntered into the small, ramshackle cabin. Who owned the cabin, Jess didn’t know. They were about an hour west of Louisville, Kentucky, close to the Ohio River. They were supposed to be waiting for help. But this kid wasn’t exactly the kind of reinforcements that Jess had been counting on.
“Vax.”
He slanted a look at Jess and muttered, “Not now.” He looked about ready to pull out his hair by the roots. He slammed the door closed behind him, stomping inside. His feet made heavy thudding sounds on the wooden plank floor, and he looked mad enough to spit nails.
“Call for help, and I get this,” he mumbled under his breath. He shot the blonde a dark, evil look and then went over to the bathroom doorway. There was no door. Jess figured at one time there must have been. There were still hinges attached to the wall, rusted and old.
Dena lay in the bathtub restrained by the silver in her bloodstream and little else. Jess could take the small cabin. Even though it was so damned small that she and Vax kept bumping into each other, she could take it. She could take sleeping on the narrow cot, and she could take the faint fishy smell that hung in the air.
What she couldn’t take was having to stay so close to Dena. Every time Jess closed her eyes, she saw the wolf-woman again, and those wicked, long black claws. Those soulless eyes. All of that hate, menace, and violence, restrained by a chemical? It wasn’t very reassuring. The silver manacles on her helped, but not much.
Vax stared into the bathroom for a minute, then turned back around to stare at Nessa. The girl gave him a sweet smile and stretched out on Jess’s cot. “You know, you really should show more appreciation, Vax.” Her voice was prim. Mary Poppins kind of prim. She gave Vax an arch look, and he just scowled back
He closed his eyes. Jess got the feeling he was either counting to ten or praying for patience. Or both.
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