Chapter 22
"Where are we going?" asked Jessa.
They'd already been driving for almost an hour, and she hadn't even bothered to ask. Jax was clearly in a foul mood — not that she could blame him — and she had little desire to incur his wrath once again.
"I'm taking you to my house."
She had suspected as much. She didn’t have a house to go to, and he clearly wasn’t planning on letting her out of his sight.
She was weak from being in his presence, from the lies and the emotional uproar of him finding out she was pregnant.
No, she was tired of him before that. Needing her space.
"And then what? You can't keep me handcuffed forever. "
He shot her a wry look. "Why not?"
Jessa shook her head and looked out the window. "Sooner or later, you're going to have to let me go. You do know that, so why are you pretending?"
"I'm not pretending anything, Jessa. I'll leave that to you. I would just like to know that you're not going to run off with my kid the minute I turn my back. And until I feel comfortable that isn't going to happen, you're going to stay tied up like a Doberman."
She scoffed. “Just slightly illegal."
"It's a hell of a lot better than what you did to me, honey."
They drove the rest of the distance in silence, all of Jessa's plans to convince him he'd be a lousy parent falling by the wayside. She couldn't talk to him when he was like this. There was no point. He was as stubborn as hell, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about that.
She vaguely recognized the mountain he lived on when they got to it, the twisting and turning road bringing her nausea back to life. The last time she’d been here had been with Ralph. "I think I'm going to be sick.”
“Just pretend I don't know you're pregnant. That ought to settle your stomach right down."
She glared at him. "This is not a joke, Jax. I've had morning sickness for weeks now."
“Forgive me if I’m running low on sympathy for you at the moment.”
"Forget it. Just forget it."
Jax slowed to a crawl near a tall wrought iron gate. He frowned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Someone's been here." He pointed to a set of tire tracks faintly visible in the wet leaves to the side of the gate. "I wasn't expecting any visitors." He reached over her lap to open the glove compartment and retrieved his weapon, noting how she shied away from him as he did.
“Do you always reach for a gun when you have a houseguest?" she asked.
Jax stared at her. "This is not a houseguest, Jessa. The only houseguests that I get know damn well not to drive around the security gate. I'm wondering if this might be a special visit courtesy of that fancy lawyer in Boston."
He could see his words register on her sense of security, her eyes widening with concern.
"What do you mean?” she asked. “We already killed the man who was after me."
"He may not be the only one. If he was paid to go after you, then the person who hired him might have hired someone in his place.”
She closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her stomach. “Why only one? Why not send two?”
“Or three, or four.”
Her eyes popped open.
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, Jessa. For all we know, that lawyer tipped someone off that Maria Elena was there looking for answers. And that she wasn't alone."
Jessa's eyes widened. "Oh my God, did we give them your name?"
He nodded once. “I did. Do you want to know how many Jax Andersson's there are in the United States?"
She took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly. "No, I don't think I do."
Jax hit a button on the dashboard of his car, and the gates opened wide. “There are three.” They drove up to the house without talking, a sprawling cedar two-story that settled into the mountainside like a cliff.
Jessa’s first visit here had been when Jax and Linda were still married, for a skiing weekend with Ralph.
She remembered being impressed by the sprawling house, with its cedar siding, tall windows, and rambling floor plan.
It was mere weeks before Jax announced he and Linda were splitting up, and the couple was clearly not getting along.
The weekend from hell.
One evening in particular, Jessa had overheard the pair arguing in the kitchen late at night when she’d gone to get a glass of water. She should have walked away when she heard Linda say, “You don’t even touch me anymore,” but her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
Jax’s voice had been deep and filled with pain. “I touch your skin, and I wonder who’s touched you there before me. I wonder when.”
“We have to move forward, Jax. We can’t keep dwelling in the past.”
“I wonder if you brought them into our bed.” The sound of a chair squeaking across the floor. “Did you, Linda? Did you bring them into our bed? Did you tell them how lonely it is with your husband gone for weeks at a time?”
“Stop it.”
“Christ, you did, didn’t you? You let them fuck you right there. What else did you do?”
“I was lonely, Jax! All the time. Even when you were right next to me, I was lonely. I still am. You shut me out with a single look, and damned if I know how to get back in.”
“Then I’ll go grab your cell phone and you can make a booty call to one of the guys you’ve been fucking. Maybe barebacking on the living room sofa we picked out together will help you sleep.”
He’d rounded the corner to the stairs, nearly colliding with Jessa.
She’d been horrified.
It hadn’t even occurred to her that Jax might still live in the same house.
Jax opened the garage door but did not pull inside. He turned to her. "I want you to wait here." He looked at her handcuffs, clearly considering, then cursed under his breath before unlocking them. "Never mind, you're coming with me."
"But…"
"But nothing. I can't leave you here handcuffed. You won't be able to defend yourself. And I can't give you the keys because we both know you’d be gone faster than a bat out of hell. Which leaves us with only one option."
He walked into the garage and opened a storage locker, withdrawing a dark vest. He brought it back to her. "Put this on." He handed her a weapon. “I’m just going to have to trust you don’t hate me enough to kill me.”
With that, he led the way inside. “We’re going to clear each room, one by one. You stay behind me, never in front, or I might shoot you.”
She slipped her arms into the bulletproof vest. “Seems we’ll just have to trust each other, then.”