by Rowena Dawn
JAY’S SALVATION
THE WINSTONS SERIES
BOOK THREE
ROWENA DAWN
SCARLET LEAF
2018
© 2018 by Rowena Dawn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
All characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Scarlet Leaf Publishing House has allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Jay's Salvation (The Winstons, #3)
THE WINSTONS FAMILY
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EXCERPT FROM “DOUBLE-EDGED”
EXCERPT FROM “EYES IN THE DARK”
EXCERPT FROM “PULLED IN”
AUTHOR’S BIO
OTHER BOOKS BY ROWENA DAWN
About the Publisher
TO MIRELA, A BELOVED FRIEND
THE WINSTONS FAMILY
REBECCA’S CHILDREN
Adam (m. Anna)
Evelyne (deceased)
Adam’s children
Marjorie (Twin, m. Jonathan) – children: Matt (35; M. Nora, adopted son - Nat), Maggie (29), Jay (29)
Michael (Twin, m. Amelie) – children: Josh (27), Lily (27)
Gabriel (m. Emilie) – children: Ariel (33), Alex (33), Becka (20; m. Bryan; twins: Lea and Sean)
CHAPTER ONE
A sickening noise of fists hitting flesh filled the alley. Deep groans of pain echoed in their wake. The woman tiptoed and leaned on the wall. She breathed deeply to quiet the adrenaline running through her veins and flexed her shoulders.
She tilted her head and looked around the corner. Her eyes lay on a group of five men. They pummeled another guy in a frenzy. Her heart cringed, and she bit her lower lip.
The poor man did his best to fight against his attackers, but his efforts were in vain. The aggressors outnumbered him, and soon, he fell to the ground. The men huddled over the body prostrated at their feet on the pavement and started kicking the man in his ribs and back.
The woman threw her thick honey-colored hair over her shoulder. She took out a scrunchie from the back pocket of her pants and bound her honey-colored mane in a ponytail so that she could move freely.
Her right hand lifted the hem of her jacket and grabbed the pistol she had shoved into the waistband earlier. She fished an ID out of her sports coat pocket with the fingers of her left hand.
She breathed and exhaled deeply. Now, she felt ready to face the attackers, so she stepped into the alley and shouted, "Police, freeze or I shoot."
To her annoyance, the men didn't even turn toward her. They continued to beat to a pulp the man curled in a ball at their feet. The woman grimaced and rolled her eyes.
"All right, then," she mumbled. She raised the arm holding the weapon and fired her gun.
The bullet bit the asphalt right next to the foot of one of the goons. That drew the men's attention. They turned to the shooter angrily and forgot about the bleeding victim lying at their feet. The five men scowled and seemed ready to jump on her.
The woman lifted her arched eyebrows and shook her head, warning the men to remain where they were. She waved her police ID and showed them her pistol.
The five men exchanged a meaningful look among themselves. They didn’t really worry that she was with the police. Still, they cared that she had a gun in her hand, and apparently, she knew how to use it. They began to file back toward the other corner of the alley, keeping the policewoman in their sight all the time.
The scowls on their faces promised fierce retribution, but then, the policewoman didn't show any outward sign of anxiety. She just stared them down with cold eyes until they turned around the corner. Then, a sardonic smile flourished on the woman’s lips. Still, she didn't abandon her stance until the men's steps had vanished and the loud bang of the back door of the casino slammed against the frame with fury had reached her ears.
The policewoman strode in a hurry to the man still curled in a ball on the pavement. His soft groans filled her ears, and she shook her head. Her mouth became a hard line when her eyes laid on the traces of the savage beating the man had suffered.
The policewoman shoved the ID back into her pocket but kept the pistol at the ready. She hunched next to the man, and her fingers touched his chin gently. She turned the guy's head with care, not to hurt him more than he was.
He tried to look at the woman but couldn't focus his eyes. The man's nose and mouth bled freely, and one of his eyes was already shut entirely. The other was swollen and bloody.
'It will be much worse tomorrow,' the woman shook her head with regret. The man's face looked as if he had gone through the wrangler, and her heart cringed again. 'Such a pity,' she thought. 'You've been such a handsome guy,' she reflected with bitterness.
Indeed, she had been watching the man for a couple of months already, although she hadn’t learned much about him. More than once, the guy's handsome face had made her heart beat just a bit faster. That had never happened to her before even though she had had the chance to encounter some more beautiful male specimens.
She shook off the inappropriate thoughts. Still, her fingers lingered over the man's forehead, and she brushed a dark brown lock of hair away.
"Do you think you can stand?" she asked him quietly. Her voice didn't betray either her thoughts or the compassion she felt at the sight of his bloody and bruised face.
The man didn't answer but touched his mouth with shaky fingers and checked his teeth gingerly. Apparently, he wasn't sure that he hadn't lost one of them in the heat of the fight.
"Listen to me," the policewoman grabbed his hand with determination and squeezed it to draw his attention. "You can check your various aches and wounds later. We have to move out of here and fast. Those guys might come back with reinforcements, and this time, they might also bring weapons with them. You're done for the day, mister, and I am only one, so we should start cracking. I assume that you want to see the sun tomorrow morning," she snapped at him. "Of course, if you are able to see anything tomorrow," she grumbled, changing her position. One of her calf muscles had begun to cramp.
The woman placed herself at the man's back and slid her hands beneath his arms. Then, she began to push him up. The man had finally decided to help her when he heard that his attackers might return to finish the job. He didn't have the wish to end up thrown into Lake Ontario or at the bottom of the foundation of a new building.
Now that she had his cooperation, the policewoman managed to help the man stand up. He was over six feet
tall and towered over her. The woman shook her head in dismay when she realized how heavy he was.
"Let's see how we can leave this God forsaken place now," she mumbled and propped the man, placing her shoulder under his arm. When the man left his weight on her, she stumbled, and both practically fell to the ground.
"Oh, oh, oh," she cried out, and her legs shook because of the effort. “My God, you’re like dead weight, man. You're heavier than a sack of grains," she mumbled after she straightened and regained her balance. "I know it won’t be easy, but let's try to get to my car only in one piece. I don’t feel like being flattened on the pavement with you on top of me. You'll have to cooperate with me, man," she barked at him. "Don't think that they won't come back," she warned him, piercing him with her narrowed eyes. "None of us will fare well if they return before we could fly the coop."
The man nodded, although he didn't seem very convinced of her words. In fact, his ears rang, and a weird hum buzzed in his brain. Still, he made an effort to move a foot before the other.
The woman started panting in no time at all. She shook her head, wondering at the man's dead weight on her shoulders. She also asked herself with a curse why she had parked her car so far away from the back alley of the casino. She should have thought that she might need it sooner or later.
Trying to take her thoughts off the herculean effort she was making, she asked, "What's your name?"
In fact, the policewoman knew the man’s name and was afraid that she might pronounce it unwillingly. She decided against shocking the guy into prostration by calling him by his name right then. They still had to cover some distance to her car, and she needed him focused on that task.
The man turned his head toward her slowly and gazed at her through the slit of the one eye he still could use. He answered only after a long minute, and the woman had already given up to hear an answer from him.
"I'm Jay. And you?" he asked in a gruff tone of voice.
"I'm Ellen," the woman replied. "Nice to meet you, Jay. Or maybe it's not so nice for you after all," she made an attempt to shrug but gave up immediately. The man's proximity didn't leave her too much room of maneuver.
"Hmm. I wouldn't say that," Jay replied. "I'm actually thrilled to meet you, Ellen. But for you, I'd have ended a corpse in the lake. I bet my last packet of cards on that," he assured her.
"Even now, you're thinking of cards," Ellen shook her head.
"How would you know what I usually think?" the man asked her, raising an eyebrow high on his forehead.
That was quite a feat, considering his already deformed face, and Ellen admired him. However, Jay hissed afterward. Apparently, it hadn't been such a smart move after all.
A fleeting smile appeared on Ellen's lips, but she chased it away. "I have been watching you," she admitted when they got closer to her car. She thought that she would manage to drag him from there if she had to.
"You've been watching me," Jay whispered with incredulity. "Since when?" he asked and halted, and the woman lost her balance for a few seconds.
"For a while," Ellen answered with indifference once she regained her footing. "Here we are," she stopped the man's next question. "That's my car," she pointed toward a dark blue car at the end of the parking lot. "At least, I was smart enough to park at the end," she said with a grimace. “Move your feet and let’s get there.”
With a lot of effort, the woman loaded Jay into the car. She propped him back in the car seat and then fastened his seatbelt with nimble fingers.
Jay’s eyes stared at her small and delicate hands in awe. ‘So graceful and yet so strong at the same time,’ he shook his head, a gesture he regretted in a second.
"I think I should take you to the hospital," Ellen said to him. Her eyes swept over his features with concern. She was worried that he might have a concussion if not a fracture of the jaw.
The man tried to shake his head again and refute her proposition but groaned instead, and his shaky fingers touched his head gingerly.
"No hospital," he hissed through his clenched teeth.
"Maybe you should look in the mirror before making this decision," Ellen replied in a dry tone of voice. "I doubt that you are in the appropriate frame of mind to make any choice in the matter," she inferred in a hard tone of voice.
"No hospital," Jay groused and tried to stare Ellen down. Still, with one of his eyes swollen shut and the other a narrow slit, his stare had no effect. "I'll be fine," he mumbled without too much conviction.
"All right then, cowboy. Let's take you home, then," Ellen shrugged with indifference. If he didn’t care about what had happened to him, she didn’t see why she would have worried.
The woman glanced behind her toward the alley to make sure that none of the thugs had come back out. Satisfied that the lane was still empty, she ran around the hood and opened the driver's side car door with a brusque gesture. Her eyes swept the shadowed road once more, and then, she sat down in the car seat and blocked the car doors with a sigh of relief. They were almost out of trouble.
Ellen glanced at Jay again, and her heart quailed when she noticed that he had sagged in his seat. She pursed her lips and started the car, driving out of the parking lot with a screech of wheels.
The woman drove at the maximum legal speed and didn't stop until she had encountered the first traffic lights. Jay groaned when she braked the car suddenly, but Ellen didn't pay any attention to him. She drummed her fingers onto the steering wheel, and her attentive eyes swept the interior of the car that stopped next to her on the right lane. When she made sure that none of the casino owner's enforcers was in that car, she turned his eyes to Jay and measured him thoughtfully.
When the green of the traffic lights flashed, Ellen started the car and then practically pressed the speed pedal to the floor. After she continued on straight ahead for about two hundred yards, she turned the car toward the lake area.
Jay turned his head to the woman and leveled his stare on her steadily. "Where are we going?" he asked her in a bland tone of voice, although his right hand had clenched into a fist.
"You said that you didn't want to go to the hospital," Ellen pointed out. "So, I'm driving you home," she explained.
"Whose home?" Jay insisted, pronouncing the words through his tightened teeth. Various pains started to make themselves known now. Before, the adrenaline had muffled them.
"Yours," Ella replied with indifference, without turning his eyes toward him. She was busy to watch the street and the mirrors at the same time. They had already gotten far from the casino, but she didn't put it beyond the casino owner to send someone after them.
"And how would you know where I live?" Jay gritted his teeth and straightened up in the car seat in spite of his protesting body. He found that entire situation dubious.
"I just told you that I had been watching you," Ellen shrugged and turned onto York Street. She knew that Jay lived there in a high rise building. "I'm a police officer. Of course, I checked you out and followed you a few times," she explained to him in an even tone of voice as if she had explained basic things to a child. She didn’t divulge the fact that she hadn’t found too much about him.
"What the heck?" Jay groused. "Why would you follow me? What did you think you would find out?" the man asked with bewilderment. As far as he knew, his life wasn’t out of the ordinary, and no one outside his family knew about his genetic heritage and his half-gifts.
Ellen shrugged again and led her car toward the visitors' parking lot next to Jay's building. "I had to know who you were and in what kind of business you were involved."
She braked and turned to him with a half-smile, "Let's take you home, big guy. There, we will see what I can do for you, and if you still have questions, I will also answer to them."
"I do hope that's a euphemism," Jay mumbled and unfastened his seat belt with not very sure fingers.
"I'll pretend I haven't heard you," Ellen replied in a severe tone of voice. "Wait until I get to your door. I would hate it
to see you sprawled on the pavement. I think it would be easier to prop you than to pick you up," she warned him and got out of the car.
She didn't know how stubborn the man was so she hurried to get to his side and sighed with relief. Jay hadn't tried to get out of the car but waited for her.
'At least he's got some brains in that handsome head of his,' she reflected, opening his door. ‘Of course, he doesn’t look so handsome now, though,’ she observed with regret.
Ellen gave her hand to Jay and waved at him to grab her arm. "Throw your legs out of the car first," she advised him. "Lean onto me, and I will help you stand up."
Jay grimaced when he moved his legs. He was sure he would see the imprint of those thugs' boots on his thighs and calves. He grabbed Ellen's arm with one hand and pushed himself out of the car with a deep groan.
Ellen braced her legs to support Jay's weight and held him until he could stand. When she was sure that he wouldn’t fall on his already broken nose, the young woman waved to him to lean onto the car so that she could close the door. Then, she took his arm over her shoulders, and they started the arduous walk toward the front door of the building.
"I suppose this is one of those expensive buildings with a front desk in the lobby," Ellen said. “I haven’t been inside,” she admitted.
"You suppose well," Jay replied dryly. The man didn’t feel at ease knowing that she had been watching him for a while.
When they got to the entrance, Ellen sighed. As she suspected, they needed a keycard to get inside.
“Do you still have your keycard?” she inquired.
Jay patted his jacket pocket, “Yep, it is right here.”
Ellen rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Do you think the door will open if the key card remains in your pocket?” she asked him.
“Don’t be mean,” he mumbled and took the keycard out of his pocket and handed it to her. “My brain is foggy,” he groused. “I thought you’d show more compassion for my present state.”
“You’re like this because of your bad habits not because of me,” she retorted in a hard tone of voice.
