Page 17 of Dirty Gambit

Lena returned with Jessie in her arms. The girl was strapped into her car seat. The door was closed, and she left them there to make a final trip for her things.

At long last, she dropped into the driver’s seat. The gun was placed in her lap and she pulled out of the parking lot the way a bullet shot from a rifle. The neck breaking jostle made it impossible for Jaxon to get a glimpse of the motel sign as they swerved past. He wondered if that had been her intention.

She didn’t turn the radio on. Silence thickened around them in an almost gelatin substance. The road they were on stretched in a narrow path between rocky walls of limestone and granite. They didn’t pass a sign for what felt like hours and with every passing mile, he wondered if she was thinking about earlier, too. If she could still feel him between her legs. If she was still wet. The single-minded track of thought was driving him crazy. His erection refused to go down, combined with his desperate need to use the bathroom, he was ready to burst. He just wasn’t sure what was going to come out if he did.

In the back, Jessie fussed. Her tiny feet kicked in time to her agitated protests, a stream of mindless babble that alternated between long bouts of screeching and short stretches of quiet. Jaxon was beginning to think they would never stop.

“She’s getting irritable.”

Lena barely glanced into the rearview mirror. “We’ll be stopping soon.”

“When?” he pressed when Jessie gave another holler.

“Soon.”

Annoyance shot through him in a rolling wave of frustration. His restrained hand bunched into a fist. A reckless little voice at the back of his mind wondered if he could lash out with his free hand if he could snatch the gun from her lap. It was right there. He could make her pullover and uncuff him. But even as the idea came to him, he shut it off; any aggressive move he made could result in her losing control of the wheel and possibly flipping them into a ditch, and he couldn’t risk Jessie’s life.

So, he went back to staring at the passing scenery, at the clear skies above, and the miles stretching between him and home.

“I have to pee,” he muttered after nearly an hour had passed and he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“We’ll stop soon,” the mumbled monotone had him slanting her a sidelong glance from the corner of his eye.

Something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t like it. In fact, it was beginning to worry him.

“Lena?”

“Soon,” she grumbled, fixed gaze never wavering from the stretch of road ahead.

Lines had appeared around her mouth, deep grooves that made her appear years older than she was. They continued at her eyes, emphasizing the dark rings hanging beneath her glassy stare. It was an expression he hadn’t seen in years, not since his long nights at university spent drowning himself in tubs of coffee and hot pockets just to get through the mountain of homework.

“Did you sleep last night?”

Her response was a flexing of her fingers on the wheel. The worn leather squeaked pathetically, but the woman remained stoically silent. Not that he needed an answer. He’d seen her up all hours of the night, pacing. Several times, she’d alternate between the chair by the window and wearing a hole in the carpet. Rest probably didn’t come easily for a kidnapper on the run. He just wasn’t sure if it was guilt keeping her up or fear. Maybe both.

At a sliver of an opening in a wall of trees, she turned the wheel and sent them rattling forward. The uncomfortable jostling elicited a cry from Jessie that Jaxon couldn’t blame her for; the vibrations had his teeth clacking together sharply.

But Lena hardly seemed to notice. She barely seemed alert. It may have been a trick of the flickering lights poking through intertwined branches, but he could have sworn she had lost a lot of the coloring in her cheeks.

Jaxon opened his mouth to comment, to ask her if she was okay, or better yet, to pull over before she ran them straight into a tree, but the narrow path took that moment to open into a wide clearing. An iron pit jutted from one corner, next to a faded picnic table that had probably seen better days. Part of one bench had been broken and graffiti-covered what used to be red paint. Branches, rocks, and bits of garbage lay scattered in all directions, a wasteland of forgotten things.

Lena pulled up along one side, away from the pit and table, and parked next to a row of trees. She cut the engine and sucked in a deep breath.

“Are we stopping here?” Jaxon broke in before she could get the chance to exhale.

She blew out the air slowly, swallowed once, and nodded. “We need supplies.”

Jaxon shot a glance at the wilderness surrounding them. “Acorns and rabies?”

Weary eyes pivoted in his direction, annoyance twisting down the corner of her mouth. “There’s a store up the road, but I don’t trust you.”

She fumbled with the belt with one hand, pocketed the keys with the other before palming the gun. Her free hand went to the door handle and she wrenched it open. She ducked out and swayed dangerously to one side. She just managed to catch herself on the side of the car. The gun made a loud crack striking the metal frame.

Jaxon shifted as if he could do something like catch her. The shackles clattered in response, biting into flesh and reminding him that she didn’t deserve his compassion.

She pulled in another breath, this one shaky. It flared her nostrils and she had to shut her eyes for a full second. The pupils were enormous when she opened them again. They peered back at him like twin holes into her private hell.

“No one can hear you,” she muttered, voice raspy and short of breath. “If you yell, or scream. No one will find you here.” She shut her eyes again but pressed the back of her wrist over the bridge of her nose. The gun in her hand wavered, and Jaxon held his breath. “Uh … just sit there and…” She broke off, half breathless, half as if she’d forgotten what she was about to say. The hand over her eyes lowered. She gave her head a rough shake before opening her eyes and squinting at him. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

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