Page 3 of Jacking Jill

The kind of love that’s coming for you, Jack.

The thought came at Jack like an arrow, and he blinked rapidly and shook his head as he tried to shake off the annoyingly sticky memory of how Ice and Indy had busted Jack’s balls about how he was next in line.

“Oh, get a grip, for fuck’s sake,” Jack muttered as he swept his gaze across the edge of the woods once more, then turned on his boot-heel and stomped towards the restroom behind the gas station. He’d told himself not to get drawn into this Darkwater stuff with the names all lining up, but it resonated too much with what Jack and Ice’s tie-dye-wearing hippie-hugging parents had tried to explain for so many years.

That there was no such thing as coincidence.

They’d even come up with some silly poem that Jack had always liked—mostly because it drove his straight-laced big brother Ice up the fucking wall.

No such thing as a lucky break.

No such thing as a meaningless mistake.

No such thing as misfortune or luck.

So just follow your heart and you’ll never be stuck.

“No such thing as misfortune or luck,” Jack sang as the restroom door swung closed and he unzipped and pointed his fire-hose of a cock at the urinal. “So just follow your heart and you’ll never be—”

But the last word stuck in his throat when he heard something chillingly familiar outside the door, from back near the gas pumps.

Two sharp pop-pop sounds.

One heavily ominous thud.

Jack would know those sounds anywhere.

Two silenced gunshots, classic military-style double-tap.

The attendant’s body dropping dead to the asphalt.

And suddenly the throaty roar of Jack’s motorcycle being kicked to life!

“Fuck!” Jack whipped out his 9mm Sig Sauer handgun, rammed his way through the door, stumbling out of the restroom with his dick still hanging out. His boots pounded the cold asphalt as he tore around the corner, but it was too late.

Diego Vargas was already racing down the county road on Jack’s stolen bike which now had a full gas-tank.

“Fuck!” Jack shouted again, shoving his cock back into his pants, dropping to his knees, placing his handgun on the asphalt and checking the attendant’s pulse even though Jack had seen enough dead bodies to know it was pointless. Two clean shots to the guy’s chest, one to each chamber of his heart. His yellow sweatshirt was already soaked with blood. At least Diego left the guy’s face intact so the family could do an open-casket funeral. “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

Jack was on his feet again in a flash, whipping out his phone to call Keller while scanning the gas station lot even though he already knew there was no other vehicle available to give pursuit. The dead attendant either lived here or must have been dropped off by a buddy or something. And Diego must have ditched his own vehicle somewhere off the county road in the woods. Either Diego knew he was being followed or his vehicle had broken down. Either way, no point looking for it, because if it wasn’t a breakdown, Diego would have disabled the vehicle to make sure Jack couldn’t chase him.

Assuming Diego even knew he was being actively chased before Jack showed up here on his noisy bike. Hell, Diego might have tossed his burner phone as a routine precaution, moving from one burner phone to another like any good fugitive would do in the modern world of GPS and cell-tower triangulation. Maybe his car did just happen to break down. Either way, Diego must have hiked to this gas station, realized the attendant didn’t have a vehicle, then decided to hide in the woods and wait to car-jack the first customer to show up.

Who just happened to be a grinning dumb-ass named Jack Wagner.

“Damn it. So if Diego didn’t know Darkwater was getting close before, he sure as fuck knows now,” Jack barked into the phone to Keller. “Diego would have seen me guarding the Senator’s townhouse a couple of months ago. I was there that night when he planted the car bomb. He knows I’m a Darkwater man, knows we’re right on his heels now. We waited two months for him to surface, and now he’ll go underground again. I fucked up, man.”

“Yeah, you did,” Keller said in his cold matter-of-fact voice, making Jack’s bristles rise with a mix of anger and embarrassment for having his dick in his hand while his target was twenty feet away. “Shit happens. You all right, Jack?”

“Yeah.” Jack tossed his helmet onto the asphalt like a pissed-off quarterback. “He didn’t take a shot at me. Must have decided not to risk getting into a firefight. Wish he had. I’d have taken his ass down if he’d stayed to fight.”

“That’s why he didn’t. He’s being cautious. Or maybe he’s in a hurry to get somewhere.” Keller grunted, then started talking to someone else—Paige or Nancy or maybe even Benson. “Paige is tapped into traffic-cams at the exits to the nearest towns. We’re going to put a call out to any cops or troopers in the area, but that’ll take a while because you’re so far out in the boonies. Still, Diego will need to get off the road to ditch the bike and switch vehicles pretty soon. We’ll get a bead on him again. Hang tight at the gas station We’ll send someone to pick you up.”

“Damn it!” Jack rubbed his clean-shaved jaw that hurt from how hard he was clenching it. “You know what? I can still catch up with him if I find a vehicle within the next few minutes. Diego won’t risk speeding and getting pulled over. And the limit is 55 on this road. I could catch up easy in pretty much any car.”

“Gas station attendant doesn’t have a vehicle?” Keller asked. “What about Diego’s car? He might have ditched it within a couple miles of the gas station. Won’t be easy to find, and it's probably disabled anyway. But maybe you get lucky.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if today’s my lucky day,” Jack snarled, glancing up and down the empty county road, the wind whistling around his upturned jacket collar, the moving air whispering that old rhyme again.

---