When they hit the third floor, where most of the bedrooms were, he stopped, nervousness blooming inside him.
Concerned, Mishka peered up at him. “What’s wrong?”
He cupped her cheeks, and her palms settled over his bare chest. “Before I show you what I brought you here to show you, I want you to know it’s going to be okay. You have nothing to fear.”
Her eyes widened. “Jaxon, what’s going on?”
“I would never do anything to hurt or endanger you.” Now or never. “You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
He swallowed—now or never—and led her into the last room on the right. He stopped. A queen-sized bed occupied the center of the room. Two men wearing lab coats stood beside it, studying several monitors that beeped and flashed.
“Oh my God. Is that…is that…?” Slowly Mishka walked forward, until she stood at the edge of the bed. “How? What?” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand. “Jaxon, you shouldn’t have done this. His men will come after you.”
Jaxon approached her. She didn’t turn to look at him, her gaze glued on the unconscious Estap. The senator’s face was swollen and discolored from the beating Jaxon had given him. His naked body was covered only by a white sheet, and there were electrodes placed over every pulse point.
Jaxon motioned to the doctors to leave, and they strode from the room without protest. “I killed the two guards who escorted me, and I made damn sure it looked like I’d boarded my plane home. No one knew I was there at the time of his disappearance.”
“Why aren’t news stations screaming about him?”
“I forced him to call his wife before I took him. He told her he was going away for a few weeks. As for other government officials, they can look for him, but they’ll never find him.”
“My God, Jaxon.” The words were barely audible, yet he managed to catch the trepidation in them. “Give me your knife.” That time she’d sounded hard, determined. She didn’t wait for his permission. She grabbed the blade at his waist and swirled it by the hilt. “We’ll kill him and destroy any evidence linking the two of you together. We’ll—”
“No.” He latched onto her arm.
She’d already raised the knife, but her attention whipped to him, eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll do it. I won’t have you imprisoned or sentenced to death.”
“Killing him will kill you.”
A moment passed before his words sunk in and her fury and fear turned to confusion. “Explain.”
“The control chip is inside him. Without his living, beating heart, it will fade to nothing. You will fade to nothing.”
As he spoke, her skin drained of color. He hated telling her this and causing her worry, but she deserved to know the truth.
“I should have known. That bastard!” She ripped free of Jaxon’s hold, dropped the blade as if she didn’t dare hold it a second more, and punched the unconscious man in the face. Cartilage snapped and blood oozed from his nose.
Jaxon jerked her backward, pinning her arms at her sides. She struggled against him, and it took all of his strength to hold her in place. She would have escaped, he suspected, if she hadn’t been concerned about hurting him. “We need him alive, sweetheart. For the time being, at least. I’m afraid taking it out of him will cause it to shut down.”
Gradually she stilled. She was panting with the effort required to control her emotions.
“I’ve got men searching the world for the best surgeons. We’re going to bring them here and they’re going to operate on you and remove the chip. Estap will never be able to control you again, I swear it. And once the chip is gone, you can kill him however you wish.”
She turned in his arms and buried her face in the hollow of his neck. Tremors slid down her spine. “Surgery will kill me. The chip is now a part of me, another organ needed to function.”
“Your creators told you that, yes?”
She nodded.
“Well, I think they lied. They wouldn’t want you to remove it, so they had to scare you about taking it out.”
Now she shook her head. “That’s almost too good to believe. I mean, all my life I’ve lived in fear of the chip and its removal. Not only because I was told I would die without it but because, at times, it was my only friend. My savior.”
“I’m your friend now, sweetheart.”
“Yes. You are.” Pause. “How did you get him?” she asked, voice shaky.
“I watched him for a day, then snuck back into his office. After I’d roughed him up a bit, I dragged him through his own secret tunnels. I had him on my private jet that very night.”
“Jaxon,” she said, and warm breath fanned his chest. “You shouldn’t have done this. You risked your life for mine.”
“And I’d do it again.”
“You shouldn’t have done it the first time. What if I die during surgery? I hate to bring that up again, but you would have risked you life for nothing.”
“You are not going to die!” Just the thought sent him into a tailspin of panic. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing. For a slightest chance to set you free, I’d do anything.”
She was shaking her head before he got out the last word. “Don’t talk like that. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m invincible.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Dallas says you’re going to die because of me.”
“Dallas is a moron.” He leaned down and kissed her temple this time. “Sweetheart, I finally found something worth living for. No way in hell I’d allow myself to be killed now.”
Her gaze lifted to his. “No way I’d allow you to be killed.”
There was an unholy, determined edge to her voice that increased his nervousness. Before he could question her about what she was planning, however, his cell phone rang, startling him.
Frowning, he withdrew it from his pocket and held it to his ear. “This is Tremain.”
“Nolan’s on the move,” Eden said.
Jaxon stiffened.
Mishka’s eyes widened as if she’d heard every word.
“Seriously, he’s been homebound nearly the whole time you’ve been gone. Now you return, and suddenly he’s running. Coincidence?” Eden pushed out a breath. “He’s invisible, so you won’t be able to see him. I’m sending his signal to your phone, so you will be able to follow him, at least. Give me two minutes.”
The line went silent.
Heart thumping erratically, he stared down at Mishka, not yet ready to leave but knowing they had to. The sooner they found and killed the Schön, the sooner they could get to work saving her.
She smiled sadly, as if she knew something he didn’t. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 24
A sense of foreboding overcame Dallas, dark and shattering as he donned his weapons. This was it, the start of his vision. Doomsday, as he’d dubbed it. He chuckled without humor.
Could he stop the next dreaded events from unraveling?
Every day a little more of the future had played through his mind—it was the only thing he saw anymore—and always with the same outcome. Jaxon begging for his own life, Jaxon bleeding, Jaxon facing the barrel of the woman’s, Le’Ace’s, pyre-gun. Jaxon…dead?
I should have killed her when I had the chance. Should have killed her when I read her list.
Finally, last night, Dallas had seen this very scene unfold: Mia pacing his bedroom, prompting him to hurry. And now, here she was. Pacing.
“Hurry,” she demanded.
He stilled, cringed, gazed down at the guns and knives lying on his bed. Another chuckle. He should have locked Jaxon up. Should have killed Le’Ace as instinct urged. Regrets sucked.
“She’s going to get him killed,” he said softly.
“Or do the deed herself.” Mia raked a hand through her hair. “But he won’t listen to reason. You’ve seen the way he is with
her.”
“Why didn’t I take her down when I had the chance?”
“Because you love Jaxon and that would have hurt him.” Sighing, she plopped on the edge of the mattress.
“Yeah.” Goddamn it, yeah. “Did you see her face when he arrived? She was cold as ice for three days, then he shouts her name and I would have sworn I saw love and tenderness in her eyes.”
“Merely a trick,” Mia scoffed as she lifted his gun and checked the detonation chamber for him. A beam of light hit the center crystal, shining bright rainbow beams in every direction before she rotated the stone to lock it in place. “That woman isn’t capable of love, I promise you.”
“Why didn’t you kill her, then?”
“I’m a softy, that’s why.”
He chuckled, and this time there was true amusement in the sound. “Yeah, I’ve always thought that about you.”
She drew in a breath, slowly released it. “Look, I knew he’d hate me if I did it without first proving how despicable she really is. I tried to do that. I told him stuff I’ve never told anyone else. I told him about the list.”
“Let’s show it to him.”
“Like that will help. He doesn’t listen anymore, doesn’t care. The only brain he’s using is the one inside Little Jaxon, and it’s not too bright.”
Dallas sheathed the serrated blade at his waist and faced his best friend. “Could I be seeing the vision wrong?” Only recently had Mia admitted to him that she herself suffered from visions. So if anyone could help him, it was Mia.
A few months ago, she had predicted the death of one of her friends.
Unfortunately, Dallas had been the one to die. He’d been resuscitated, of course, and then given Kyrin’s blood. All of which had changed his life. And now, here I am, in the same predicament Mia once found herself in.
He knew one of his friends was going to die, but didn’t know how to stop it. At least he knew which friend.
“No,” she finally said. “They always come true. That’s never stopped me from trying to stop them, though. Kyrin, too. A few weeks ago, he dreamed I would fall into a freshly dug grave and break my ankle, so he actually paid men to visit every funeral held and stand guard. But he didn’t count on kids going into the cemetery and having a little fun. I chased them, fell. Kyrin was pissed.”
“I didn’t know you broke your ankle.”
She shrugged. “I heal just as quickly as you now.”
Did that mean she’d ingested Kyrin’s blood or that she was becoming more alien every day? He shoved away the question. Didn’t matter, really, because he’d love her no matter what. Right now, Jaxon mattered. Keeping him alive mattered.
“Why do we have the visions if we can’t use them to our advantage?” he asked, sliding the last knife into the side of his boot.
She looked up at him, grim. “I wish I knew.”
“We have to have them for a reason. I can’t believe otherwise.”
“So what are you going to do?” Frowning, Mia handed him the pyre-gun and pushed to her feet.
“Le’Ace can’t shoot him if she’s dead. So I’m going to do what I should have done in the beginning.” Determination rushed through him, as hot and dark as his earlier foreboding. “I’m going to kill her first. And I won’t let the thought of Jaxon’s hatred stop me this time.”
While Jaxon’s SUV wound along New Chicago’s streets, Mishka hooked his cell unit to her favorite toy, an isotonic receptor. The first locked on Nolan’s voice, providing his location, and the second locked on his muscular contractions and the heat each movement generated, the isotonic dye pulsing like a heartbeat. Now, whether he was silent, invisible, and/or still, she’d have his location pinpointed.
“Five minutes,” she said, “and we’ll be right on top of him. He’s stopped moving.”
Jaxon leaned back in his seat and stared up at the car’s roof, pondering. “Wonder what he’s doing, if he’s meeting anyone.” He’d jerked on a T-shirt before they’d left, covering his gorgeous chest.
“Our staying away was probably a good thing. He’s nervous by nature, and being cut off from physical contact with us probably forced his hand. Now he’ll reveal his true intentions. Betray us or drop his brothers in our laps.”
Jaxon flicked her a grim glance. “Either way, he has to die.”
“I know.” Surprisingly enough, Mishka thought she’d miss the otherworlder. He reminded her a lot of herself, searching for something, craving something he shouldn’t have, for having it meant destroying it. Nolan with disease, Mishka with what? Not Estap, not anymore. Destroy Jaxon by dying during surgery?
You’re going to kill Jaxon, Dallas had told her.
She couldn’t shake the prediction from her mind. Even before she’d known what Jaxon had done for her, she had been unwilling to hurt him. He was her reason for breathing, her reason for living.
She’d once thought about allowing herself to be killed once this case was finished. Had prepared for it, even, to save Jaxon. Now she didn’t have to. Senator Kevin Estap no longer controlled her. She was her own woman, made her own decisions. Only problem was, little worries were now popping up.
Could Jaxon be happy with her, long-term? What if she couldn’t give him everything that he wanted, needed?
“Do you want children?” The words blurted from her before she could stop them.
His brow furrowed in confusion. “You just threw me. Do I want children to what?”
“Never mind.” She pretended to busy herself with the IR. “That was a dumb question.”
A moment passed in heavy silence.
God, I’m stupid. Of course he wanted children. All men did. They wanted their family line to continue. And while Mishka could give him devotion, love, protection, and adoration, she could not give him kids.
If she survived the surgery, would he come to resent her? One day leave her? Pick another woman over her?
She’d never had to worry about those things before. Never cared about a man, never wanted to be with one.
Warm fingers suddenly cupped her jaw and angled her head. Jaxon was peering at her intently, his silver eyes liquid with understanding. “No,” he said.
“No what?”
“No, I don’t want children.”
“You’re lying,” she said, not daring to hope.
“I’d never lie to you. Wait. I take that back. I’d never lie to you unless it would get you into bed.”
When she saw that he was grinning, hope proved stronger than doubt and flourished, despite her fight against it. “But why?”
“Why would I get you into bed? I can’t believe you have to ask.”
A laugh bubbled from her. “You know what I mean.”
His eyes darkened with desire. “I love it when you laugh, and you don’t do it enough. But why don’t I want children? Because I want you all to myself, and the little monsters would get in the way.”
“Be serious.”
“I am. If, after fifty or sixty years together I can bare to share you, which isn’t likely, so I hope you don’t become too optimistic, but if, at that time, you decide you want them, then we’ll adopt.”
Fifty or sixty years together. She chewed her bottom lip, falling in love with him all over again. Her pulse hammered wildly, every beat of her heart for him. He’d given her so much already, kept giving her more, and now she wanted to give him something. What, she didn’t know. What did he desire more than anything?
“Jaxon, I—”
The car eased to a stop in front of a grocery store, drawing her attention.
“We’re here,” he said. He stiffened, morphing from lover to agent in mere seconds. He turned, eyes narrowing on their surroundings.
The sun waned in the sky, evening creeping up. At least fifty people milled throughout the area. “I don’t see your friends.”
“Surely they’re around somewhere.”
Call them, she almost said, then remembered she was using his phone.
Lucius sud
denly appeared beside the car and rapped his knuckles on Jaxon’s window. Seeing him, Jaxon unlocked the doors and the agent entered. His big body consumed the entire backseat.
“Took you long enough,” the guy muttered. He’d bleached his hair and pierced his brow since the last time Mishka had seen him. There was a python tattooed around his neck. He was as comfortable in disguise as she was, she supposed.
“Where are the others?” Jaxon asked.
“Eden and Devyn are waiting in back, just in case the little shit decides to take off that way.”
“Can Devyn freeze him?” she asked, recalling the way the otherworlder had frozen her. “Even if he’s invisible?”
Lucius shook his head. “He’s afraid to try. Even with the scanner, he can’t see him to lock on him, but if he freezes everyone in the area and Nolan proves immune, Nolan will know we’re here and probably take off again.”
“So how are we going to see him? I know we can watch him move on the phone, but we don’t know what he’s doing with his hands, who he’s talking to, what he’s picking up.” Jaxon pushed out a heavy sigh.
“Give me a minute and I can tell you what he’s doing.” I hope. She rarely used the ability needed to do so.
Both men stared at her. “How?” Jaxon asked.
“The chip.” I need to see body heat.
Switching to infrared vision.
Instantly the world around her began to fade. When only darkness remained, red lines began to blink and spread, forming vertical, moving blurs. Some were dark red, some were light. Some winked in and out, some stayed in constant place. Different species emitted different temperatures.
Ignore everything human. Except the human next to me, she added, praying it was possible.
Concentrating only on aliens and the one human.
Most of the blurs disappeared. She glanced in Jaxon’s direction, happy to see red.
Can you link with the IR and focus on any Schön, ignoring all other otherworlders?
Attempting.
Several heartbeats of time ticked by and nothing happened.
The Alien Huntress Series Page 53
