The Law of Nines (Sword of Truth 15.50)

Jax let out a huge sigh as she flopped back into her seat. She held her throat as she coughed.

“Dear spirits, that hurt,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

Alex had the Jeep back up to speed.

“Stop!” she suddenly cried out. “Stop the truck right now!”

Alex, surprised by her screamed command, slammed on the brakes. The Cherokee slid to a stop. He pulled off the road onto a thinly graveled parking area on the shoulder.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“I’m an idiot!” Jax growled.

“What are you talking about?”

Jax reached up, grabbed the rearview mirror, and twisted it until it ripped off the windshield.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She threw open the door and heaved the mirror into the bushes. “Saving our lives.”

She retrieved her silver knife from the floor and used the pommel to smash the glass in the side mirror on the truck door. The glass broke into a spiderweb of cracks. She bashed at it over and over with the butt of the knife handle until all the pieces of glass were knocked out. A black socket with an adjustment cable was all that remained.

She ran around the front of the truck and did the same thing to the driver’s-side mirror. When she had finished she rushed back around and got in.

“Let’s go,” she said as she slammed the door shut. “Get us away from this last spot they saw us! Go, go, go!”

Alex checked over his shoulder and then dumped the clutch, spinning the wheels in the gravel as he pulled the Cherokee back out onto the street.

“You think they found us by the rearview mirrors?”

She slumped back in her seat, comforting her neck. “How else?”

He turned to look out the back window to make sure they weren’t being followed.

He saw a big man in a leather vest running after them from the graveled parking area.

With a cold wave of shock, Alex realized that the man must have arrived in this world right where the Jeep had been only a moment before. She had told him once, in the driveway of his house, that they usually arrived in pairs. That was the partner of the man they had just killed and sent back.

Alex stepped on the gas. The next time he looked back, they were too far away for him to see the man. He would never be able to follow or find them on foot. Alex let out a sigh of relief. He gripped the steering wheel tighter to try to stop his hands from shaking.

Jax, also watching the man vanish in the distance behind, looked over at Alex out of the corner of her eye, as if to ask if he understood, now.

“That was close,” he admitted. “But how am I going to drive without mirrors?”

“Would you rather drive with new passengers arriving from my world every few minutes?”

“I guess not,” he admitted. He glanced over at her. “Are you all right, Jax?”

Her brow wrinkled as she fought back tears while rubbing the muscles in her neck. “I think I will be after I get some sleep.”

“Close your eyes,” he said in a gentle voice. “I’ll wake you when I get us a room. Sleep until then.”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t know if she’d fallen asleep or if she had passed out.

Alex looked back over his shoulder. The road behind was empty. He wasn’t much comforted.

43.

ALEX LEANED TO THE SIDE A LITTLE, trying to balance Jax’s weight with his right arm and hip as he used his aching left arm to try to unlock the door. In her semiconscious state, Jax did her best to stand, but her legs kept giving out, making his hand pull away from the keyhole. He at last managed to turn the key in the lock. The door swung open.

He used his foot to shut the door, then swept Jax up in his arms and carried her into the room, following the well-worn track across the beige carpeting. It hurt his injured arm to hold her like that, but he figured it would be easier than trying to get her up off the floor if she passed out completely.

In her groggy state, she let out a soft moan as she put her arms around his neck. She laid her head against his shoulder as he carried her into the dark room. It made him imagine the innocent, feminine little girl she once had to have been.

A long rectangle of light from signs for the truck stops shining in through the window beside the door fell across the double beds. An older TV sat on the long counter where it could be watched from bed. A tiny table with two wooden chairs sat under the front window beside the door. It smelled a little musty, but he wasn’t about to complain. At that moment the small room looked like a presidential suite to him.

Outside, semitrailer trucks constantly rumbled past on the interstate. He could hear a TV on in the room beside theirs. Still, it was a relief to have what appeared to be a safe place to stop, a place hidden away from all the people hunting them.

Alex gently laid Jax on one of the two beds.

“The mirrors, Alex,” she mumbled.

“I know, I know.”

He went into the bathroom, flicked on a buzzing fluorescent light, and draped the white bath mat over the mirror. He brought a towel out and hung it over the mirror on the wall beside the TV. He adjusted the towel to make sure that not the tiniest part of the mirror could peek through. He felt like his mother, draping things over mirrors.

Alex pulled the cord, closing the heavy, ugly blue drapes, shutting out the garish light of the truck-stop signs. Once the drapes were closed, he turned on the lamp on the taller section of the long counter. The dark fake-wood veneer was chipped along the edge of the counter from people hitting into it as they lifted their suitcases up to lay them open. The bedspreads were the same blue as the curtains, with bands of burgundy designs that matched the valence above the window. It was tacky and cheap-looking, but it was a place to stop, to rest, to hide from the people hunting them, and for that reason Alex was delighted with the room, already thinking of it fondly as home, at least home for the night.

Jax sat up, blinking slowly at him, as if the single lamp he had turned on was too bright.

“Lie down,” he told her.

“I can’t. My bladder is going to burst.”

“Oh. The bathroom is right there,” he said, pointing.

He put a hand under her arm and helped her up. Using her legs after the stress of stretching up on her toes all night to breathe followed by the heart-pounding escape left standing almost more than she could manage. Without the spur of terror, her muscles were giving out and her legs wobbled unsteadily.

As he was helping her to the bathroom, she said, “I need a needle and thread. I need to sew up your arm.”

He left her at the doorway into the bathroom. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

She gripped his shirt for support. “Now, Alex. We need to wash it and do it tonight or it will become infected.”

Alex sighed. He had an idea.

“All right. You go use the bathroom. Wash up for bed if you want. I’ll go get what we need and be right back. I’ll leave you the gun.”

“No. I’m hidden inside. You will be out there where people can see you. You have no way of knowing who might be looking. You take the gun. I have my knives.”

He couldn’t imagine that she could fight very effectively in her condition, but he didn’t want to argue and she did make sense. “I’ll be right back. I’ll knock twice, pause, and knock twice again before I open the door so that you know it’s me coming back.”

Alex locked the door and checked it before jogging across the parking lot. It was starting to drizzle. The inky blacktop reflected the bright light of signs off its slick surface. The spotlights pointed up at signs for interstate travelers illuminated the otherwise invisible mist drifting past.

The cross street was busy, even late at night. People were coming off the interstate for gas, to get something to eat, or to stop for the night. Trucks were pulling in and out of a nearby truck plaza.

The convenience store had half a dozen truckers and other travelers inside. Alex carefully checked e

ach one for potential threat as he picked up a basket and went to the coolers. A memory of the first time he’d met Jax flashed through his mind. She had looked at everyone that same way, checking for threat. Now he understood it so much better.

He pulled a handful of packaged turkey slices off a peg in the cooler and threw them in the basket. He grabbed some ham as well, along with a variety pack of sliced cheese. He picked up a couple of six-packs of bottled water and a variety of other small items he thought they might need.

As he kept an eye on a big guy with long, greasy black hair and a beard, he stopped at the section with first-aid supplies and picked up the things he needed. As far as Alex was concerned, the man looked a little too much like a pirate. But in the end it seemed he was buying far too much beer to be a tracker from some distant world hunting the last Rahl.

Nonetheless, it was comforting to have a Glock only a twitch away. After the brawl in his truck had ended, he had quickly retrieved the gun from under the seat. It was a relief to have it handy. The next time someone from another world showed up, he vowed to be ready. They had been fortunate and survived a number of surprise attacks. He didn’t want to be caught unprepared again.

At the checkout counter he asked the clerk for two of the prepaid cell phones on the rack against the back wall. Alex paid for everything with one of the hundred-dollar bills Sedrick Vendis had used to buy Alex’s six paintings.

That seemed not only like a lifetime ago, but like a different life. Maybe it was.

When he got back to the room, Alex knocked with his special signal to let Jax know it was him. When he opened the door, he saw her sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed staring at the TV. There was a talk show on.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he set the plastic bags on the small table.

Jax looked rather alarmed. “I saw one of these things where they held us. I was drugged so I couldn’t pay much attention to it. But they have one here as well, just like at the crazy house. I saw a button that said ‘on,’ so I pushed it.” She pointed. “These pictures appeared.”

Alex thought that having a TV in a “crazy house” was rather appropriate.

The host on the TV was fawning over an actress who thought she was brilliant because she happened to have been born beautiful and read lines written by other people. It amazed Alex what qualified a person for being worthy of adulation.