Somewhere between the sporadic flashes of lightning the man wasn’t there anymore. It still seemed impossible the way he simply vanished. Alex glanced into the truck. The blood that had been splattered all over and running down the side of the dashboard was gone as well. It looked as if it had never been there, as if nothing had happened.
“Alex, we need to go. Men like that usually travel in pairs. The second will be here any—”
There was a soft thud to the air that Alex felt as a thump deep in his chest. For an instant it seemed like there was a dark smudge swirling in the air right beside Jax. As soon as he saw it, the indistinct, dark stain in the night changed into a vortex of vapor in the humid air.
The vapor almost instantly condensed into a shape.
Alex was already starting to draw the gun even as he could still feel the thump deep in his chest. The shape came into being before his weapon had cleared the holster. Jax was already spinning toward the threat.
There was no question in Alex’s mind; he had just seen a man step out of another world and hit the ground running, charging at them out of the downpour. The vapor rising from his beefy arms evaporated into the rain as he came at them.
Before Alex could get the gun up and on target to fire, Jax spun, slashing open the man’s abdomen.
As the man stumbled to a stop to stare down in shock at his insides erupting out of the long gash just as he had appeared in a new world, Jax rammed her knife up through his eye. The blade went in hilt-deep. It was as effective as the hollow-point round had been.
The man went down before he’d known what happened.
In the quiet whisper of rain, Jax looked up at Alex. “Like I said, usually in pairs.”
Ben had always said that in close-quarters combat, a knife was often faster than a gun. Alex was a believer.
As she hurriedly squatted down to repeat her task of activating the man’s lifeline, Alex holstered his Glock. “Let’s get away from here before we find out they travel in quads.”
Jax glanced up, giving him the oddest look. She then gestured. “You said that you had to push the, the . . . what did you call that thing?”
“Truck. I have to push it down the drive to get it to start,” he said as he ducked in and released the parking brake. He leaned his weight into the windshield pillar to get the truck rolling. “Hurry with him while I get the truck started. When I do, jump in.”
The truck rolled down the drive, picking up speed. Alex ran beside it, pushing, then when it was going at a good clip he hopped in and put it in gear. As he turned to the right out into the street, in the downhill direction, he lifted his foot off the clutch. The engine caught. He pumped the gas a few times to make sure it wouldn’t stall, then put it in reverse, spinning the wheels on the wet pavement as he backed to the drive. Jax ran down the driveway to meet him. The second man was gone.
Alex rolled his hand, urging her to hurry.
Jax pressed up against the door. She slapped the palms of her hands against the passenger window as the truck started rolling forward.
“Alex! Wait! How do I get in?”
Rather than try to explain where the handle was and how to push the button, he leaned across and popped open the door. The woman had opened a doorway between dimensions or worlds or something, and yet she couldn’t open a truck door.
Jax jumped in. “Sometime you will have to teach me how to do that on my own.”
As he shifted into second, leaving his house in the distance behind, he noticed that she had a death grip on the console and the door’s armrest.
“Do we have to go so fast?” she asked in a breathless voice.
Alex glanced down at the speedometer. “We’re only doing thirty.”
“Can you make it go slower, please?”
For someone who had just gutted a man three times her size and given him a lobotomy for good measure, she suddenly seemed pretty squeamish. He guessed that he was starting to feel pretty squeamish himself. He slowed down a little to let her get used to the sensation.
With her blond hair plastered against her head she looked half drowned. He noticed, too, that her hair was no longer stained with blood. Her wet dress was a shambles from the brief battle. Seeing her alive, though, he doubted that she could have looked any better to him. At least she also looked like she was starting to relax, if only a little.
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“About what?”
She waited until he looked over at her. “That you had to kill that man.”
“I’m just thankful that he wasn’t able to hurt you.”
As they raced away slowly down the street, he noticed her hands fisted in her lap. She looked like she wanted to pound rocks.
“What’s wrong?”
She stared off through the passenger window. “I should have been paying more attention. It’s not like me to be so careless. I almost got us both killed.”
Alex was angry as well, but for a different reason. He was still in the grip of rage—rage at a man who had tried to hurt her and had come so close to doing so.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re both alive and they’re both dead. That’s what matters.”
“Not to me,” she said under her breath as she looked away. “I didn’t come here to be stupid.” He could detect a catch in her voice when she said, “People are depending on me.”
“Jax, look at me.” Reluctantly, she did. “We survived. I don’t think those people depending on you would give you points for style. They’d only care that we survived so that we can find out how to stop this.”
She smiled a bit at last. “You’re right. We survived. I would lecture you for being so sloppy, Alexander Rahl, but I was no better. Let’s hope that we both are more careful so that the next time it isn’t nearly so close.”
He returned the smile. “Deal.”
22.
ALEX SLOWED AS HE TURNED the truck into the well-lit parking lot. Even in the middle of the night it was half full.
“What is this place?” Jax asked.
Alex pointed off to the right. “That’s a gambling casino over there. Gambling isn’t legal on land, but it’s allowed on boats, so they build the whole place on big barges and tie them to docks at the edge of the river.”
“Do you spend time at this place?”
Alex knew what she was getting at. He remembered her admonition about places he was known to frequent. He had been afraid, though, that if he simply parked in a strange neighborhood or an empty lot they would draw unwanted attention.
“I know of it, but I’ve never been here before.”
She pulled a strand of hair back off her face. “Good.”
“This place is always busy, so we won’t look suspicious parked here. We can pull the cargo cover over the back and sleep under it.
It will be cramped, but it will keep us out of sight for the rest of the night.”
“I’m not so tired. I’ll stay up and stand watch.”
Alex shot her a look. “Stand watch? Anyone sitting in a parked car might attract attention. You, in that dress, with that long blond hair, this time of night, are bound to draw a crowd. That’s the last thing we need.”
“I look a mess,” she said as she glanced down at her dress. “Besides, I wore this dress so that I wouldn’t draw attention.”
“Trust me,” he said. “A crowd.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her start combing her fingers through waves of her damp hair, trying to coax it back into place. Alex thought that her disheveled condition somehow made her look all the more alluring. He had always thought that if he saw a beautiful woman with her clothes and hair in disarray and he still thought she was beautiful, then she truly was beautiful. Jax was more than that. She was gorgeous.
A thought he definitely didn’t like crossed his mind. He wondered if her looks helped her get close to men she intended to kill.
He forced his thoughts off of how attractive she was and pulled into a parking place between a
couple of minivans. They would make the Jeep harder to spot for anyone looking for it. Centered between towering light poles, it was as dark a place as he could manage in the casino lot.