Page 30 of The Vigilante's Lover

We arrive at my aunt’s house in the early evening. Colette has been witty and funny despite the fact that we had to limit our topics of conversation. We ate at a burger joint and she made fun of the French fries.

I’m glad to be out of the car for a while. My life has been nothing but long drives and difficult conversations for what seems like ages.

Colette pulls up in front of the porch. Nothing about the house looks any different, but my perspective of it certainly is. Everybody says it’s a safe house for Vigilantes. They can’t all be wrong.

I must be the one who’s wrong.

I realize I don’t have any keys and the front door has all six deadbolts in place. I can’t remember if Jax locked the back door or not. Seems like he would have given me the keys if he’d had them.

“We’ll have to go around back,” I tell Colette.

She walks from the car and smooths her smart beige sweater, making sure the navy stripe along the bottom edge is flat. Do all these Vigilantes dress like models?

She follows me around the house. “I’m guessing Jax stole you and snuck out the back like a common criminal.”

“Something like that,” I murmur, remembering my tattered gown and the red ropes.

The back door is closed but unlocked.

“Let’s take some care going in,” Colette says. “Let me go first.”

She pulls a gadget from her pants pocket. It looks like a Swiss army knife, but when she flips it, something that resembles the barrel of a gun pops out.

Colette eases the door open. I wince when it squeaks on its hinges.

She steps inside, then pauses, listening.

Once we’re in the kitchen, she shakes her sleeve so that it falls back, revealing a watch a lot like the one Jax had before we went to the silo.

With one tap, it scans the room with a strange gold light.

Certain things turn red. The coil beneath the refrigerator.

My radio clock with its digital display. Then a strange lump below the oven.

“What’s that?” I whisper.

“I think you have a mouse,” she says.

I suppress a squeal. “I do not.”

She moves to the door, but I continue to stay by the oven, feeling freaked out. I tap lightly on the side of the stove. A tiny scuffle below makes me want to jump on a chair.

Instantly I’m annoyed with myself. I just escaped a high-security silo, swam in a river, and tried to seduce a dangerous man.

I will not freak out about a mouse.

Colette moves to the next room, but my mind is still admittedly on the critter in my house. I’ve been here for six months while I nursed my aunt as she faded away. I never saw any evidence of mice.

I turn on the light over the stove.

But I see it now.

The package of bread on the counter has a hole in it, and little dribbles of dried crumbs litter the surface.

What’s different now, since I left? Is it just because the house was never empty before? It was only one night.

I spot a bit of rice on the floor near the pantry. That shouldn’t be there either.

The door is slightly ajar and I open it wider. I never leave that door open and I’m quite certain I didn’t before I went to bed last night, before Jax arrived.

I step inside and flip on the light. A bag of rice also has a hole, more grains spilling out. Two cereal boxes are turned on their sides.

Dang it. How am I going to get rid of it? Trap it? Maybe I can borrow someone’s barn cat.

I lean my head against the door frame. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to deal with a big empty house alone. My need for Jax rises up, overwhelming me. It’s ridiculous. I barely know him. He was horrid to me. Tied me up. Stole me. Then foisted me off on his friend.

But the things he made me feel. So much power. And passion. This can’t be very common, what has happened between us.

Maybe it is for him. Maybe all his women feel like I do when he leaves.

I kick at the rug that has been on the floor of this pantry since I was a child. I cock my head. It’s turned the wrong way.

No one would notice but me. But there’s a frayed corner from where the door always catches the edge.

And that corner is opposite the door now, near the back wall.

Someone’s moved this rug since yesterday.

I want to back out of there, call for Colette. Fear sluices through me as I think about some stranger going through my things.

But then I remember — Jax.

Maybe it was just him. I think he said he looked around.

I pick up the end of the rug and slide it back.

And then I see it.

A hatch.

There’s something hidden in this pantry.

Colette is no longer quiet, and I hear her footsteps coming up the hall. “All clear!” she calls out.

I shove the rug back in the pantry and close the door.

She pops her head in the room. “You okay?”

“Just the mouse,” I say, gesturing toward the bread on the counter. “I hate mice.”

“Get a kitty,” Colette says. She turns on the overhead light. “Cozy little place.”

“It’s been my aunt’s forever,” I say. “Why do you people keep calling it a safe house?”

“Never mind all that. Sounds like a miscommunication from the beginning.” Her smile is genuine, even though I know she’s lying. “Jax wrote letters to the wrong place.”

“No,” I insist. “Jax said Klaus was killed here. He was very clear about it.”

Colette stares up at the ceiling. “You know, I think I saw a cat wandering in the field behind your house. You want to go see? She will help with the mouse problem.”

What? I stare at her, and her eyes get very big. She taps her forehead. “You want that, right? A cat for the mouse?” she says.

She heads for the back door, and I start to understand. We’re being monitored here, just like in the car.

“That’s a great idea,” I say.

We leave the house and walk a ways through the field. Aunt Bea’s land stretches for several acres, a buffer against the rest of the world.

And easy to defend, I realize, seeing the house and fields through new eyes. It’s flat and easy to spot people arriving. There aren’t any trees or places to hide.

Did she know and never told me?

“How does a Vigilante stop being a Vigilante?” I ask suddenly.

Colette stops and turns to me. Her short bob swings against her cheekbones. She slides her sleeve up and taps her watch. Only when it tells her what she wants to know does she answer. “You can retire, just like with anything.”

“Does your family have to know you are one?”

“It’s through your family that you become one,” she says. “Why all the questions?”

“Why didn’t I know this was a safe house?”

“Only your aunt could answer that.” Colette’s dark eyes search the fields and follow a car that drives along the road in the distance. “But there are parents who retire and never tell their children.”

“My parents are dead.”

This gets her attention. “How did they die?”

“Boating accident.”

Her lips push together in a tight line.

“I know,” I say. “It’s like a spy cliché. But they were huge regatta racers. They liked boating in storms. They lived for that sort of danger. It was really only a matter of time.”

She nods absently, eyes back on the road. “There are reasons for everything,” she says. “Do you have the option of selling this house and moving?”

“I hadn’t thought about it yet,” I say. “Aunt Bea only died a couple weeks ago.”

“You have no other family?”

I shake my head. “No. My father was an only child, and Aunt Bea was my mother’s sister.”

Colette reaches out to squeeze my arm. “You really are alone in this world, aren’t you?”

It sounds so bleak when she says it. “I want to go with Jax,” I tell her. “I have nothing else.”

She sighs and starts a slow walk back. “Jax is a charismatic man,” she says. “No one ever wants to leave him.”

I picture all the women she is probably talking about and frown, but I step alongside her. The cold, stiff weeds crunch as we step on them.

I don’t really want to go back to the silence of my house, although I am anxious to explore the pantry. But if Colette leaves, so does my only connection to Jax.

“Can I go with you?” I ask her.

“Not possible,” she says. “They’d just take you from me and bring you back anyway.”

“The Vigilantes, you mean?” I ask.

She nods. “You’re seeing way more of it than you should.”

“What will happen now?”

She pauses again and reaches out to stop me from walking farther.

I sense we are just out of range of whatever devices are inside my house that monitor my activity. I make note of the location and draw a circle in my mind around the perimeter so I can remember.

“I think you should sell this house and move on with your life,” Colette says.

“But someone else will end up here.”

“It will get bought by the people who need to use it.”

“Oh.” I guess the Vigilantes can do anything they want.

She starts back to the house.

“Will I be able to get hold of Jax?”

She shakes her head. “Nobody gets in touch with him unless he wants it.”

“Can I get in touch with you?”

Colette stops again. “Mia, I’m sorry Jax mixed you up in this. I know it looks like an exciting life. But there’s no way to let you in. I’m sorry.”

We head back in silence, finally arriving on the back porch. Her voice changes to something more formal, like her words are being monitored for quality assurance.

“We have some security that will watch over you,” she says. “But they are not invading your privacy. No one is recording your activity or listening in. They just pay attention to who might arrive and make sure they are not a problem.”

If they’re not listening, then why is she talking like this? My hair prickles on my neck.

“Would that happen?” I ask. “Would somebody come here?”

She hesitates. “No. You will be safe.” She leans forward and kisses me on one cheek, then the other. “Take care, Mia.”

Then she’s walking to her car.

I watch the fancy BMW fire up and head down the lane. I don’t go in the house right away. I plunk down on the porch step. I feel absolutely bereft. She’s my only connection to Jax. And now she’s gone. They’re all gone.

I lean my head against the banister and let myself fall into a nice hard pity party. I’m alone. Nowhere to go. Nothing but this rambling house that somehow brought Jax to me only to have him leave again. There’s no way to find him. If the Vigilantes can’t track him, then I have no hope.

I stand up again. Unless there’s something in the pantry that can help me.

I have to look.