Page 31 of The Vigilante's Lover

I figure Mia is home by now. It’s been six hours.

Sam guides us to a Vigilante outpost that is hidden beneath a donut shop. I’m sitting out in the parking lot with an ancient heat cloak blocking my body signature.

Meanwhile, Sam’s inside ordering a cinnamon roll.

The cloak is stifling with the sun coming through the window. It has a clear pane I can see through, but I feel like a damn antique sitting here with it.

Sam has stolen and repaired too much tech since I’ve been out of prison, and he’s not pleased with how I destroyed his last efforts.

Therefore, I’m stuck under an old cloak that smells like Old Spice.

My thoughts keep straying to Mia. I wonder what she’s up to, back at home, puttering around her rambling old house.

Because I have nothing else to do, I pull out an IdentiPad and look up Georgiana Powers, who ran that safe house until the period where Klaus arrives and is reported dead. The house is decommissioned and Powers leaves.

Meanwhile, I’m in jail and don’t know any of this and send letters to Klaus at this house. Mia gets them and writes back.

I can’t concentrate.

My mind drifts to her last letter, the sentence she had written when I found her at the safe house. Something about ripping her gown to expose her naked hips.

I picture her in the barn, lying in the hay, her wrists tied over her head. Every wiggle makes her breasts sway deliciously, and her body is warm around my fingers.

Focus, Jax.

I won’t see her again. Normally this isn’t an issue. The women through the years are a blur. Vegas. LA. New York. Berlin. Paris.

But something about Mia is different. It’s better I stay far away.

I keep reading. Was Georgiana Mia’s aunt?

Georgiana Powers was born to two Vigilantes and entered the program in 1960 at the age of fifteen. Her stellar record during the Vietnam War got her Phase Six status by the age of twenty with a specialty in long-range weapons.

Then her parents were seriously injured in action and took charge of the safe house as a semi-retirement. They were only nominally involved with the network, since that safe house was rarely used.

Georgiana took over the house in the late ’70s and stayed there until her health failed six months ago.

I set down the pad. The information matches the timeline Mia told me. But there is no mention of a sister or a niece. Maybe all that was wiped when Mia was declared a special.

The door opens and Sam gets back in the car.

“Easy as pie,” he says as he starts the car. “Two Vs are stationed here during the day, mostly monitoring system backups.” He grins. “Which means we have backups.”

He exits the parking lot. When we get out on the road, he says, “You can take that cloak off now.”

I pull the damn thing down, sweat trickling down my neck. “Why wasn’t your car cloaking me?”

Sam laughs. “It was.”

“What the hell?”

“Just a little joke since you’re causing me all this trouble.”

Asshole. “So who’s there at night?” I ask. Back to business.

Sam smacks his hands on the steering wheel. “That’s the beauty. They rely on electronic surveillance. Nobody thinks these old backups are worth the manpower.”

I toss the cloak in the backseat. “When do we head back?”

“Just after midnight,” Sam says.

I stare out the window. The pine trees whizzing by still make me think of Mia. Probably I’ll never come through this part of the country again without picturing her in that field behind a tractor, strips of her gown falling off her body to the ground.

But she’s safe now.