Page 180 of The Vigilante's Lover
We approach a big orange and white roadblock. A few bewildered neighbors are standing beside this as if they don’t understand why it’s there. They’re even more confused when we swerve around it and moveon.
“They’ll figure it out and move it,” Colette says. “We have to get to Jax.” She taps on her dash screen. “Uh-oh.”
I glance down at it, my hands tight on the wheel. “What?”
“I got a call from Sam’s Blackphone while we were tied up with Jovana.”
“Is there a message?”
Colette shakes her head. “I’m using an encrypted line, off network. Voice mail isn’t secure.”
She dials through. The pinging sound makes me shiver as the call tries to connect.
It picks up, the screen showing only an audiowave that rises and falls with the sounds.
But I’d know that voice anywhere.
“About time you bothered to answer,” Jax says. “You getting your nails done?”
Colette laughs. “Got a red dart to the belly,” she says. “Think I’ll choose a polish to match.”
“Ouch,” he says. “Hate the red darts.”
He pauses, and I can barely contain myself. I want to squeal but I don’t want to interrupt them.
“I could probably use a lift,” he says. “I jumped off the Interstate 81 bridge into the Potomac.”
“Jax!” I cry out. “Are you okay?”
“Mia?” he asks. “You have Mia?”
“I do,” Colette says. “I’d laugh but it really hurts when I laugh.”
“We’ll pick you up,” I say quickly. “I’m driving Colette’s car until she recovers from the dart. Where are you now?”
His voice is warm now, happy sounding. My heart skitters. I can’t believe I’m talking to Jax!
“I’m running along Route 63. There’s a funeral home ahead, but it’s not on the Vigilante books. So I’ll head into the cemetery behind it.”
“Got it,” I say. “How far are we?” I ask Colette.
“If I can coax Mia into super drive, we’ll be there in thirty,” Colette says. “She’s never driven like a Phase Six before, though.”
Jax chuckles. “She hasn’t driven like a Phase Sixyet.”
“We’ll be there in thirty,” I say, and simultaneously slam the accelerator and pull the wheel toward my chest.
I’m gettingJax.
13: Jax
I really could use a shirt.
A little old lady sitting on a concrete bench near the entrance to the cemetery watches me curiously as I enter through the pedestrian gate. I wish I had put on workout shorts and running shoes when I left the hotel, so I could just jog past her and seem perfectly normal.
But I couldn’t have predicted that I would end up strolling through the manicured grounds of the final resting places of so many fine souls when I got hauled out at gunpoint.
I nod at her kindly, feeling her gaze as I stroll past. Despite my state of dress, I feel I’m better off inside the walls than walking randomly along the highway.
