Enemy Lover (21 page)

Marcus caught the girl’s gaze again. He nodded so
subtly that he wasn’t sure if he really had. Then he moved back into the shadows of the columns and waited.

“He just figured it out,” Jax said.

“Roger that, keep him in your sights, Cassidy,” Dante said.

“He’s not moving, just watching and listening to the speech from the fifth column down from the podium on the right,” Shane said as he easily maneuvered around the throng of guests.

Jax had been too mesmerized by the cacophony of emotions playing out across Marcus Cross’s face to hear a word of the senator’ s. His realization of who Sophia Rowland was had torn her apart. And with that realization had come the next one. Gracie. He had a sister. Each time a different emotion had flashed across his features, Jax had felt his anguish. His anger. His frustration. The depth of his emotion surprised her. He was a cold-blooded killer. Why the confusion? He didn’t know Gracie. He was not the type to care. It didn’t matter, she told herself. He’d carry out his mission if she didn’ t. It was what he did.

And if he could read her thoughts, he’d know she’d do everything in her power to stop him. Grace Rowland was not going to die tonight or anytime soon. Jax was, at her core, still a cop. But deeper than that, she was a woman with a deep-seated instinct to protect. In the end, it was what had driven her to ultimately kill Montes. Not revenge, not anger, not retribution. Just simply destroy him before he destroyed more innocent lives.

The senator’s short speech ended. With his wife and daughter on either side of him, he made his rounds to
each table, thanking each and every person for their support. Jax kept her eyes alert and debated on engaging Cross again, in effect giving him the opportunity to call her off. Ultimately, she decided against it. It would show indecision, and indecision equaled weakness. So she backed off.

The room had warmed to uncomfortable with the surge of movement among the bodies and the clash of copious scents. “I’m heading out to the loggia for some air, then we’ ll meet,” Jax quietly said.

“Roger that,” both Shane and Dante said.

As she stepped out into the cool air, her hair stood straight up on her neck.

“Eighty-six the hit—I have other plans for you,” Cross said from behind her.

An immediate sense of relief hit her but was followed quickly with trepidation. What exactly were his “other plans”? She turned to ask him, but he was gone.

“Get in here, Cassidy,” Shane said in her earpiece. “Something’s going down.”

“Copy.” Jax sprinted into the Green Room to see the senator moving toward the anteroom fast, while his immovable circle of security and staffers surrounded him. Shane weaved his way around from the south end behind her.

“What’s going on?” Jax questioned.

“Not sure,” Dante said. “Stick with them, Cassidy. I’m staying close to Goldielocks. Not taking any chances this is a ruse to draw us out.”

“Roger that,” she softly said and hurried across the crowded space to catch up to the men. Just before the
door was about to close, Jax called out, “Senator Rowland?”

Rowland jerked and turned to look at her. He was pale. Sweating. Abruptly, he motioned her inside the sanctum of the anteroom, then held up a manila envelope that was clearly marked
Family Values?
in big black bold letters.

She looked at the senator. “Where—”

“It was at one of the tables. On an empty seat. Right next to the governor’s wife!”

Jax clenched her fists and thought of Cross. Damn bastard. “We didn’t see—”

“Obviously you didn’t see. With you and your team’s sloppiness, I’m surprised he didn’t step up to the podium and join me.” Hands shaking, Rowland ripped open the envelope and removed a color eight-by-ten photo. As Jax watched, his face turned to ash. “Oh . . . God,” he whispered.

Jax looked over his shoulder and saw what he held in his hands. Damn. Gracie Rowland was not so innocent after all. Even as she cringed, instinct drew her to the open window behind him. Sure enough, a rope was tied to the balustrade. Just hitting the ground two stories below was a man clad from head to toe in black. Her first thought was Cross, but she quickly nixed it. He wouldn’t run; he’d stay and watch. Besides, this guy was half Cross’s size. He took off without looking back.

“Stay here!” she ordered, then grabbed onto the rope and swung herself over the balustrade. Despite the hindrance of her dress and heels, she rappelled down the two stories and was on the ground in seconds. As she
did so, she spoke into her mic. “Need backup at the anteroom. I’m in pursuit of a male who went out the back window. Secure the senator and the envelope he has.”

Jax kicked off her Jimmy Choos and took off barefoot after the bad guy. She continued to call out her location, but as she ran down Van Ness, she lost sight of the guy. His scent lingered in the air, and amazingly, she was able to follow it. As she did, she was quite aware that with the exception of the knife strapped to her thigh and her deadly jewelry, she was unarmed and that with each step the neighborhood was getting less and less affluent. And darker.

Still, her vision was surprisingly keen. Scents swirled around her. Some good, most nasty. Garbage, sewage, unwashed bodies. The bad guy’s scent began to fade. She wrinkled her nose and slowed her gait to a jog.

Her vision was sharp, her senses on overload. It felt like more than adrenaline. It felt like she was on some kind of supersensory drug. What the hell was going on?

“Cassidy?” Shane shouted in her ear, “where the hell are you?”

She looked up. She’d been so focused on the chase that she had not given out her location for some time. Bad cop. “I’m headed west. Alley off of Van Ness.”

As she followed the fading scent of the bad guy down the quiet alley, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She was not alone. She could feel eyes, everywhere, watching her. If she turned around, she’d be at their mercy; she could only go forward.

“Disengage, Cassidy. Return home,” Dante commanded.

Jax slowed her pace and looked over her shoulder.
At least half a dozen gangbangers fanned out thirty feet behind her. “Ah, that’s a negative. I have company at six o’ clock and they look like they might want to party.”

“I’m heading your way, Cassidy,” Shane said. She could hear his heavy footsteps in her earpiece as he ran frantically to locate her.

She eyed her surroundings. It was dark. Dank. Dirty. A perfect place to kill. “The buildings are two- and three-story. They look like a mingling of commercial and apartment. It smells like rotted food, so I must be near a few restaurants.”

“
Mamacita,
you gonna be in heaven in a minute,” one of her admirers called out. He was closer. His cloying scent of cheap cologne, sweat and pot mixed in a noxious odor. Jax swallowed hard. Not because she was afraid but because he stunk to high heaven.

She cast a quick glance behind her. There were more of them now, and they were closing in. “I’m going to make a run for it, boys. I have too many unfriendlies gathering.” She took off then. She was fast, but in bare feet, in a littered alley, her pace was stalled by broken glass and debris. Heavy footsteps thudded behind her. She broke at the end of the alley and came around to a street corner. She looked up at the sign to find it missing. Both ways. She darted across the street just as the blaring of a horn and headlights flooded her senses. Blinded by the light, Jax reacted instinctively and leapt over the swerving car.

No one was more surprised than her. What the hell? When had she become superwoman?

She didn’t stop to ponder it. Her adrenaline was amped up so high that she felt she could do anything,
even outrun the pack of hoods. She ran down the sidewalk and turned left. She ate up the sidewalk and almost closed her eyes at the sheer power of her arms and legs carrying her away. But then she turned another corner and slammed into a hard wall of chests.

Hard, callused hands grabbed her. She flung them off, but a hard ring of bodies circled her. Panic set in fast and intense.

The last time she’d been surrounded like this, Montes had pushed his animals aside and, with them watching, he’d violated her in the most terrible of ways.

She felt faint for the slightest second. Her pulse raced out of control. Her chest heaved up and down so painfully that she thought her heart would explode. But somewhere in the deepest darkest reaches of her soul, a calmness overtook her.

Straightening from her crouching position, Jax snatched the knife from her thigh sheath and tossed it back and forth from hand to hand. They were straight up gangbangers.
Nortenos
by their red bandanas.
“Ven con mama,”
she taunted. In the air across her neck, she made a quick slicing motion with the knife. She had their attention. As she brought the blade across her jaw, she jabbed it at the guy to her immediate right. Jabbed it straight into his neck, yanked it out and kicked the thug closest to her with her right heel to the nuts. When he grabbed his groin, she stabbed the back of his neck. As she yanked out the blade, Jax whirled around in a crouched position and moved menacingly toward the five who remained standing.

It was enough to evoke bedlam.

“Who wants to go next?” she softly asked.

She didn’t wait for an answer. Surprise and the unexpected were her biggest weapons. She grabbed the closest one with her left hand and yanked him right into her knife. He squealed like a pig. She shoved him backward and took two more out. The two left standing backed up. She tossed the knife back and forth and stepped toward them. “C’ mon, boys, you aren’t afraid of little ol’ me, are you?”

“Cassidy?” Shane breathlessly asked. “What’s your damn 20?”

Jax laughed. The two men who stood undecided in front of her looked confused. She tapped her right ear. “My partner’s all worried about me. He wants to know my location. Should I tell him to just look for your carcasses?”

Inexplicably, Jax did not want to be found. She was high. High as Mount Everest. On top of the world. Undefeatable. She didn’t want the adrenaline rush to end. She wanted to exact justice. She looked at the two thugs standing in front of her. Normally the gangsters carried.

“No heat?” she asked.

They looked at one another, then at her. “We were told no heat,” the smaller of the two said, shaking his head.

“Shut the fuck up,” his buddy warned.

So, this was no random meeting, was it? “Told? By whom?”

“No way,
puta,
” the bigger one said, shaking his head and stepping back until he hit the wall of the building.

Jax moved in. “I really don’t care for that word.” In a lightning-quick move, she jabbed her left hand out and with the heel of her hand struck the bigger of the
two in the throat. He dropped, gasping for breath, to the ground. That left the small one with the answers. She moved in on him, pushing him backward until his back hit the wall of a building. He did not try to fight her. He just stared wide-eyed at her. When his stare lifted past her right shoulder and he turned white, then crossed himself, mumbling,
“Dios mio,”
Jax crouched and turned.

Her own heart felt as if it had dropped twenty stories to the ground. She too crossed herself. “Holy mother of God,” she mouthed. And wondered if this night could get any worse.

Jax couldn’t move. Terror grabbed ahold of her and shook hard. Marcus Cross stood behind her, his blue eyes blazing red and in full fang.

The gangster behind her hissed in a sharp breath, cursed a blue streak in Spanish, then shoved her toward Cross, who caught her in his arms, then protectively pushed her behind him. As the gangbanger moved past them he threw the knife he had threatened her with at Cross. It landed with a meaty thunk in his right biceps.

Jax flinched. Cross just growled. Not in pain but anger. He looked at the knife impaled to the hilt in his arm, then back at the gangbanger who stumbled all over himself to flee the scene. Cross grabbed the knife from his arm and hucked it at the gangster’s back. He hit him right between the shoulder blades, stopping him in his tracks.

In another lightning-quick move, Cross snatched the flailing, screaming body up by his right arm and flung him against the brick wall he had just been standing against. He hit with a sickening thud, then slid down the wall, leaving a bloody trail of shattered bone fused with gray matter before he crumbled in a heap onto the dirty ground.

Speechless, Jax ignored Shane’s desperate pleas for information, stood still, and watched what followed.

The original bad guys were pouring out of the alley toward them. Cross stood in front of her to the left. She inhaled a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

“Cross, I’m not armed,” she said to his back.

“I have this. Get out of here.”

“There’s six of them and one of you!”

“I said I have this. Now get the hell out of here!”

Torn by whether to stay and fight beside Cross or take off and save her own skin, Jax stood rooted to the pavement.

Tat. Tat-tat-tat-tat.

“Down!” Cross yelled. Jax hit the ground. The gang memebers’ bullets ricocheted off the wall behind her and the ground in front of her. Most of them, however, hit their mark. Cross’s body jerked back and forth, as bullets tore into him.