Page 46 of The Vigilante's Lover
She shakes her head. “No. I was there with my aunt. That’s right when I arrived. Almost to the day.” Her eyes plead with me. “We were alone. Nobody was killed there. I never heard of the Vigilantes until you told me.”
I want to tear out my hair, a feeling I’m not used to. Interrogating difficult prisoners was something I used to do all the time. Why is this pathetic sniveling girl getting to me?
I reach to tap my watch, realize it was confiscated at the silo, and manually bring up the dash screen. “Encrypted message,” I say.
The display flashes red, then green. “Encryption initiated,” it says.
“Message to Sam and Colette. Klaus dead. Records deleted. Rendezvous in—” I glance at the countdown to when I have to give up the ID of the car. I can’t push it. “Thirty-six hours.” I give a set of coordinates that will put us near the safe house.
Mia sniffs. “They were going to send me home.” She rubs her neck. “But I didn’t want to go.”
I cut off the communication screen so that it won’t add her ramblings to my message. Her voice sounds so forlorn, so lost.
“All right, I’ll play,” I say. “Why didn’t you want to go home?”
Her green eyes search mine. She looks me over, my hair, the white shirt, now wet and sticking to me, my suit jacket still at the silo. They rest on my hand, which just caused her no small amount of pain.
“Because I want to be with you,” she says. “All the way. With you.”
22: Mia
There, I’ve said it.
Jax’s expression is unreadable. I’ve just bared my pathetic heart. That I want him. I want this life. I don’t want to go home. That he can tie me up. He can do anything he wants. I’m willing.
“Well?” I manage to ask.
The soft dings of the alarms suddenly increase in volume and speed.
Jax glances at the dash. “They’ve found us,” he says. “Damn it.”
He wrenches open his door and dashes around to the trunk. I can’t see what he’s doing with it open, so I climb out of the car, tangled in the heavy, cold, wet dress.
When I get around to the back, Jax is pulling a large gelatinous brick from the trunk. Attached to it is a circuit board with a blinking green light.
“Time to give you your life back,” he says to the brick and heaves it into the underbrush.
He slams the trunk.
“Well?” I ask again. “Will you keep me? I’ll do anything you say. Anything you want.”
He pauses for a second.
“You really have nothing to do with Jovana,do you?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.” My heart accelerates. I think he might be agreeing.
“And you’re not trained in any way as an operative?”
“I have the shoes now,” I say, lifting my foot in the white sneaker. “I can start.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, and when they open again, they are glittering and hard.
“I can’t have an innocent civilian come with me,” he says. “I’m a fugitive. I’m already putting my comrades in danger.”
I take two steps closer to him. “Don’t send me back to Tennessee. That’s not where I belong. I can feel it.”
Jax shakes his head. “We’re done here. The Vigilantes obviously know you are a civilian. I’m not sure why they are protecting you, and it doesn’t matter.” He points into the woods where he threw the brick.
