Page 16 of The Vigilante's Lover

I have to stuff down my panic at being separated from Jax. Funny how quickly your abductor becomes your only familiar face. I’m not sure if I’m going from frying pan straight to fire. Or if I’m saved.

Jones, the man in the brown blazer, guides me gently by the elbow as we go down a short hallway. I turn to look behind me for Jax, but he and the man in the suit are already gone from the glass corridor. Jax’s information still lights up the display, the word FUGITIVE pulsing red.

“This way, Ms. Morrow,” Jones says.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

“Just to our visitor lounge.” As we approach a set of steel doors, a scanner sends a green light across his body. The panels open for us.

We enter what seems to be an elevator, but there are no buttons.

The doors close, and we start going down. I reach for the wall to steady myself in the crazy shoes. Before I can even ask where we’re going or how this elevator is controlled, the doors slide open again.

The corridor ahead is oval shaped, barely taller than us and only slightly wider. The walls are smooth and metal. Jones leads the way, and I try to walk more normally. I am determined to get the hang of these heels. I try not to think about what will happen if I have to try to escape in them.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“It’s an old missile silo,” Jones says pleasantly. He slows his pace to accommodate my unsteady gait.

“But what is it now?” I ask. “Those glass walls we came through aren’t from a missile silo.”

We arrive at another set of doors. Again Jones is scanned. But before the steel panels can part, he holds up his hand, palm forward. A red light blinks and the doors stay closed. My anxiety rises.

“How much did Jax tell you?” he asks.

He’s fishing for information. I don’t want to get Jax in trouble.

“Nothing,” I say innocently. “He says he found me at a safe house and therefore my identity was compromised. He thought I’d be safer here.”

All lies. I can do this. I think of my mother, what she would say and do if she had no idea who was friend or enemy.

Jones nods. “Well, don’t trouble yourself with any of that. We’ll make sure your home is safe enough when we get you back.”

My head snaps up. “I can go home?”

“Of course you can,” he says. He lowers his hand and the light switches to green. The doors open smoothly.

For a moment, I can’t connect what I see ahead of me with the bare metal tube we just walked through. It’s like a hotel lobby. A few people wander through the plush space, artfully decorated with low sofas, a twisted metal sculpture in the center, and a long curving desk to one side.

At the desk, six women sit facing out, looking at a glass screen that separates them from the people passing by. Projected on the screen are images, words, maps, and dots. They busily move their hands over the information and talk into little microphones that come from their ears.

There is no natural light. The walls are marble but have no windows. We must be deep underground from the elevator ride.

A slender woman in a tailored pale blue suit approaches. “This must be Mia,” she says and reaches for my hand. “You are surely exhausted. If I know Jax, he hasn’t fed you or let you sleep.”

“We slept — I slept,” I say, fumbling for words.

Her expression doesn’t change. “I’m Dell. I’ll arrange for your return home.” She nods at Jones. “I’ll take it from here.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Jones says. Then he walks away. I feel abandoned again.

“How do you know Jax?” I ask.

The woman begins walking, and I assume I must follow.

“The question is, how do YOU?” she asks.

My suspicion is pricked. Does everyone here answer a question with a question? I decide to be stubborn. “I asked you first.”

We cross the lobby and enter a carpeted hall. Dell smiles at me kindly. “I worked with Jax back on the West Coast,” she says. “Six years of his crazy antics. There was this one time in Vegas with a bunch of MMA fighters having a brawl…” She trails off, shaking her head. “That Jax.”

“Oh.” I wonder now if maybe she and Jax had some sort of relationship. She’s talking about him very familiarly. My stomach feels like lead. Dell is poised and beautiful and wears her heels with grace and ease. This is undoubtedly the sort of woman Jax is used to.

Not a naive country girl who can’t handle her shoes.

I try to match her posture as I totter down the hall. I wonder what he is going through. Interrogation? Back to prison? He was so confident things would go well for him.

“Will I get to see Jax?” I ask.

Dell pauses by a tall steel door and waits to be scanned. “He’s going to be in meetings today.” Her tone is dismissive.

The handle pops open. “Let’s get you something to eat while we arrange your transportation,” she says.

I feel weird about just going home after everything that has happened. It seems so anticlimactic.

Dell leads me into what looks like a lounge.

Curved sofas follow the rounded walls, all in subdued shades of gray and blue.

Soft lamps give the room a peaceful glow.

A long kidney-shaped coffee table is decorated with three small vases of bright pink flowers like exclamation marks in the calm space.

“Do you drink coffee? Tea?” Dell asks.

“Tea, thank you,” I say. I sink onto one of the sofas and resist removing the uncomfortable shoes.

Dell sits a few cushions down. “I’m sure you’ve been quite lost and bewildered by all that’s happened.”

My concern pricks me again. What if they want to get information from me to use against Jax?

“So, when will I get to leave?” I ask.

Dell taps the face of what looks like an ordinary watch. On the wall, which appears to be glass over a light gray surface, an image appears. Dell skims the words, which mean nothing to me, just a string of Greek letters and coordinates and times.

“Surface time to your home in Tennessee is about six hours,” she says. “But we have to get special dispensation to have transport brought in mid-shift.” She smiles at me kindly. “But that will be no problem.”

“Thank you for the trouble,” I say uncertainly.

The door slides open and a young woman, maybe seventeen, enters the room with a tray. She is dressed oddly in a white pantsuit that looks like vinyl. “What an unusual outfit,” I say.

“Katya is in training,” Dell says. “This is her uniform.”

Katya’s chocolate eyes never leave me as she sets the tea set on the coffee table. “I’ve never met a special before,” she says.

“That is all, Katya,” Dell says sharply.

The girl’s face flushes red. She turns and hurries out.

“What did she mean by ‘special’?” I ask.

“Just someone outside our business interests being in the facility,” Dell says. She pours a steaming cup of tea. “I hope a breakfast blend is all right.”

Suddenly I wonder if the tea is drugged. My heart pounds as Dell sets the pot back on the tray. “Sugar?” she asks. “Milk?”

I shake my head no. She moves the cup closer to me.

“Won’t you have some?” I ask.

“Will that make you more comfortable?” She’s on to me.

“Yes, I would like you to drink first.” No sense hiding what I feel.

“Hanging with Jax would make anyone wary,” Dell says. She pours another cup.

I screw up my courage and ask, “Did you and he…date?”

Dell laughs with a low throaty sound. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

I imagine the two of them entwined in bed.

I don’t want to know any more. I pick up the cup, almost take a drink, then set it down again. Dell hasn’t touched hers.

A small panel near the floor opens across the room, and a silver object rolls out like a metal bowling ball.

I resist the urge to pull my feet up on the sofa as it travels across the carpet to rest by Dell’s ankles.

“Ah, good,” Dell says. She presses her palm to the surface of the ball. It glows green, and with a strange hiss, the top section pops up and twists open. Inside is a lovely bracelet with a line of clear crystals and a large gold clasp.

Dell picks it up. “Thank you,” she says to the object, which responds by sealing itself closed and rolling back to the open panel.

Weird.

Dell turns to me. “This is a very important accessory for you,” she says and slides closer to me. “It acts as a key to all the rooms in this building. You are free to move about this living space as well as a kitchen, bedroom, spa, and gym.”

She snaps the bracelet on my wrist. “You are not a prisoner here, Mia. We want to get you home and back to your normal life. It’s just not simple once you’re brought to a facility as high security as this one.”

I shake my wrist. The crystals tinkle together like any normal bracelet. “How does it work?”

“When the scanners get to it, the doors will just open for you.”

“They don’t know who I am, like the other people?”

Dell hesitates, as if weighing her words. “You are not in our system.”

That makes sense. Everyone was so surprised that only my name popped up on those glass screens.

I glance around, realizing there are multiple identical door panels in the circular room. I’m no longer sure which one I came in.

“How do you get back aboveground?” I ask.

“Now that’s another thing entirely,” she says. “There are limited entry points. You’ll be escorted for that.”

“Will Jax do it?”

I see her patience is wearing thin on this subject. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing Mr. De Luca today.”

Or ever again, if I understand her tone. I arrange my face into a simplistic smile and repeat my earlier question as though I’m not terribly sharp. “How long until I get to go?”

“As soon as we can arrange it.”

Or, I think, as soon as I can get myself out of here and find Jax.