Page 50 of Dirty Gambit

Lena sighed, resigned to accept his incompetence, and returned his phone. He snatched it from her grasp and immediately shoved the device into his pocket, concealing it from her. She ignored him and walked over to the freezers. The gust of frigid air washing over sweat slicked skin felt like pure heaven but lasted only a second before she snatched up two bottles of water and slapped the door shut. She kept a tight grip on one bottle. The second one was slipped casually into her pack when she was sure the boy had gone back to his cat videos. Moving along the aisles, she plucked up a chocolate bar. Three more were tossed in next to the pilfered bottle. One green apple went into her hand, two were slipped into her bag.

She took her three items to the counter and set them down. The boy hastily tucked his phone away and rang her up.

With her purchased things in a plastic bag and her pack over her shoulder, Lena stalked out into the heat. Her loafers clapped loudly in her wake. Somehow, the afternoon had grown even hotter if that were possible. Maybe it was the trudging through the forest or the stress of trying to escape the law and a man in a car, but sweat trickled down from beneath the itchy weight of her wig in a heavy stream, blinding her. The skin beneath the strap of her weighty pack chaffed, making the area red and tender. There were several miles still to go and already she was second-guessing her decision to find a bus station. They would have her photo. Even with a cheap disguise, someone was bound to recognize her. She needed a car, or a ride as far away from that town and Jaxon as possible.

But without the duffle bag of money, she had no money. She’d budgeted just how much she was willing to use from the stash. Big chunks of it had gone towards the motel and ensuring her and Jessie’s escape from the country. She’d spent a smaller chunk on food and clothes for Jessie and the cars. A small portion had gone to Pablo and Marie for helping her. Everything else, every last, remaining bill was for Jessie’s future.

It made no difference to Lena that Jessie had been fortunate and adopted by a pack of rich people. She wasn’t just another random orphan. Jessie would have her own money, money owed to her. Sure, it wasn’t clean, but who cared? Money was money, and her niece wasn’t going to be anyone’s charity case.

“Hey!”

The booming holler broke through the heavyweight of Lena’s drudging thoughts, disrupting the already churning waters and alerting her to the other soul on that stretch of road. The fact that anyone had been able to sneak up on her without her hearing a thing had her spinning to face the intruder.

The fist came out of nowhere, grabbing and twisting into her hair from behind. The plastic wig tore off Lena’s head with the momentum, releasing the heavyweight of her mane. Dark tendrils unspooled down her back and around her shoulders, concealing the looming shadow pressing down on her, but she caught just enough of his second attempt at restraining her to jerk back. The heel of her loafers caught the gravel and she pitched backwards to the ground, meeting the jagged stones with all her weight.

The pain was astronomical or would have been if the burst of adrenaline hadn’t taken that moment to kick in. Her entire body surged into reflexive defense. She twisted over, throwing herself sideways, away from the invader and pushing to her feet. The momentum pitched her glasses askew. They cracked against the pavement and one of the lenses popped out. But Lena didn’t stop to consider them.

In the same motion, she scooped two fistfuls of dirt and gravel and spun. Her captor had no time to get over the sight of her hair clasped in his grasp before she had pitched the dirt into his face. His cry of surprise was silenced by the knee she jerked straight up between his wide stance. He went down where Lena shortened his squeak with a fist in the throat, then another across the face.

Blood exploded from his nostrils in a stream that mixed with the split in his fat lip. He garbled something she doubted was a flattering compliment and grabbed at his battered face.

It took her a moment to recognize the asshole trucker from the gas station with his features hidden behind blood-soaked hands. What more, his truck was nowhere in sight, which made her think he’d been hiding in the bushes, hoping to catch her and possibly drag her to where his truck was parked. He hadn’t anticipated her not going down without a fight.

Lena considered taking his keys and finding his truck; it couldn’t have been parked far. It was better than walking any further, but commonsense overpowered the rash decision; most — if not all — trucks came built with a LoJack. The company wouldn’t simply let her disappear with their product, and she was already in enough trouble.

Resigned, she left him doubled over in the dirt and edged backwards, careful not to take her eyes off him until there was a good six steps between them. Her heart pounded in her chest, riotous drumming that rattled her ribcage. Her lungs ached, a familiar burn she knew all too well from the many nights she had jerked awake because a floorboard had creaked outside her bedroom door in the middle of the night. But she held her shit together, bunching her fists and counting to ten like one of the workers had once taught her to do.

Gena had been new to the business. She still believed she could help make a difference. When Lena thought about all the times the woman’s meditation techniques had come in handy, she couldn’t help wondering if maybe she’d been right. But it wasn’t the time to worry about that when the trucker, a nightmarish lump of blood and broken cartilage was struggling to push to his feet. The pain, she knew, would quickly turn into anger and anger would turn into violence if she didn’t get moving, but there was nowhere to go he wouldn’t catch her. There were still miles of road barricaded by an ocean of wilderness she had no hope of navigating. She couldn’t stay. She didn’t want to stick around when he was able to walk again. If she had her gun, she could blow out one of his kneecaps, but that wasn’t an option.

She was contemplating maiming him with a thick enough tree branch when whining whimpers were splintered into a million shards of chaos. From somewhere in the direction she’d come from, an engine revved. It roared, a feral beast signaling the pack it was dinner time. Lena’s head jerked up just as a sharp glare of sunlight spiked off the chrome ornament glued to the hood of a piece of junk. She had just enough time to think,no waywhen the Chevy Nova gave a shrieking wail of rubber grinding on asphalt. An explosion of dust burst into the air, consuming the heap of metal and the driver, but she heard the wail of hinges as the driver’s side door flew open.

He emerged from the gray cloud, a dark silhouette built of power and brewing rage. His every motion seemed to be happening in slow motion, a rippling dance of man and muscle that belonged on the big screen. He’d rolled up the sleeve on his filthy dress shirt to reveal the bandages around his wrists and the veins under all that smooth skin bulged under the force of his bunched fists. The hard line of his jaw was a solid line of pure fury that mirrored in his cold, hard stare. She was just beginning to think the man knew how to make an entrance when those cutting green eyes rounded on her.

“Lena, get in the car.”

Maybe it was the sight of him appearing like some avenging angel, or the fact that he’d found her at all, but she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the command until he grabbed her elbow in passing and gave her a sharp shake.

“What…?” was the best she could manage.

“Get in the car with Jessie,” he repeated, following it up with a shove in the proper direction.

Lena staggered, but remained upright, feet unwilling to be moved when her mind was still scrambling to catch up. In the end, it was the crunch of Jaxon’s feet on the gravel that propelled her to sprint after him and plant herself between him and his murder victim. Her palms slapped into the creased material of his dress shirt, over an unyielding wall of man chest.

“I got him,” she told him, pushing her weight against his. “Jaxon!”

His bright eyes dropped from his prey to hers and narrowed. “He’s still breathing.”

She would have laughed at that but kept her features firm when replying, “He got his ass handed to him by a girl a third of his size. Let it go.”

He seemed to consider her logic, darting glances between her and the guy fighting to push to his feet. The tender spot between his legs must have been giving him some trouble because it looked painful every time he tried. That seemed to satisfy Jaxon’s bloodthirst. But now she was the focus of his attention.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he snapped, but rather than give her a chance to explain, he caught her arm again and hauled her back to the car himself.

He yanked open the passenger side door and forced her inside. It was closed behind her with enough force to make her wince. Then he was on the other side, folding himself up behind the wheel and propelling them out of there with a violence that sent rocks and debris spitting into the air, concealing the trucker from sight behind a mushroom cloud of dust.

“Answer me.” Jaxon took a sharp turn down a narrow path. “Why did you leave?”

It took her a moment to think of words when she couldn’t get past the fact that he’d found her, that he’d come back and had been prepared to kill a man for her. His motives may have been unclear, but it didn’t stop her from gawking at him with the wide-eyed stare of someone witnessing a mystery unfold.

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