Page 172 of The Vigilante's Lover

But then, I see something that gives me pause. A quick change of expression before the needle is fully in.

Jax crumples his face as the poison hits him. It’s not a natural look, at least not to me. It feels scripted.

Then there is a small genuine look of surprise.

“Ha!” Jovana says. “He didn’t think they’d really do it!”

Jax falls to his knees, then crashes face-first into the floor. It’s all Ican do not to cry out, but even the single heave of my chest causes the lasers to singe me again. Maybe I should just flail, fight, let it burn me up.

“Rewind it,” Jovana says with a laugh. “I want to see him go down again.”

They go back to when Carter injects the drug into Jax. And I see it again, this strange face crumple.

I’ve seen Jax poisoned. I’ve witnessed how he reacts. It wasn’t a snuff dart then, but I suspect this expression he is doing isn’t real. He’s done it deliberately.

Like he’s faking it.

And suddenly, I know. I know it with the certainty of someone who loves the way I love Jax. If he were truly dead, I would have felt him go.

And despite the fact I’ve seen him fall to the ground, I know it.

He’s not dead.

He’s not.

9: Jax

Sam nudges me. He’s ended his call. Paulson drives at full speed, flashing by traffic on an interstate now, trying to make good time to D.C.

“What’s got you all wrapped up?” Sam asks. “The woman?”

I grunt. “I was just remembering that slave trade bust where I met Jovana.”

“She should not have made it out alive from that,” he says. “You guys blew up the whole club in the end. Your Phase Threes got the women out of the bunkers, but Jovana wasn’t with them.”

“Obviously, she was a trained operative from the start,” I say.

“Obviously, she was only there to meet you.”

We’re drawing the same conclusion. In the year I sat in prison, I reviewed all that I knew about her. She hadn’t behaved like I would have expected a slave to during that first meeting. And she hadn’t been rescued by any of my people in the ensuing chaos.

But she turned up again, not two days later.

“I guess I was supposed to carry her out of there with a background of fire,” I say bitterly. “But she found me anyway. Her plan resumed.”

“So you think Sutherland hired her early on?” Sam asks.

“No doubt. I just don’t know why I was a target.” I watch the landscape whiz by. We are probably only an hour outside D.C. at this point.

“We can ask Sutherland when we see him,” Sam says. “That will be a friendly chat.”

“Who called on your Blackphone?” I ask. “You have more people assembled?”

“Colette,” he says. “She found Mia.”

My voice explodes in the car. “What? Where is she?”

Sam frowns. “Colette’s handling it.”