Chapter 12
12
F rederick wondered whether the thug was dead. He should bend down, touch two fingers to the side of the neck, find out. But he didn’t want to touch the man and he especially didn’t want to get his shoes dirty with the blood spreading out from under this Morton Jackman.
It was imperative to get Anne Lowell out of the house and on the way to the airport. Time was pressing. It would be disastrous to be stuck all night at the Portland airport with a kidnapping victim. Of course, Frederick would keep her under, but still. He’d promised his anonymous benefactor a living, breathing—but no one said anything about conscious—Anne Lowell by early tomorrow morning and he had every intention of keeping his promise.
Lifting a woman who was deadweight from the ground was not easy, even though Anne Lowell was slender. He bent down. Though he hated to admit it, Frederick’s knees were not what they once were. When he lifted the woman in his arms. he staggered. Carrying her in his arms as he would a child was not going to be feasible, not with the snow and ice outside. He shifted her torso, placing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
Excellent. That worked.
Frederick stood unsteadily, looking down at the thug. The thug had dark skin, but was turning dusky pale from blood loss. His lips were turning white. If he wasn’t dead he would be soon.
Had the bullets gone clear through or were they still in Jackman’s body? It didn’t really make any difference. Even if they’d gone through he didn’t have time to look for them, and if they were still inside he definitely didn’t have time to probe.
The gun had been ‘cold’. Untraceable. He hadn’t handled the bullets in any way, the gun was pre-loaded. He’d had an extra magazine, just in case. Though he hadn’t expected a gun fight, which he knew he’d lose. He was a thinker not a shooter. He had to catch this Jackman totally by surprise and he had.
All his meticulous planning had paid off. In less than eight hours, he’d discovered Anne Lowell’s new identity, tracked her down, eliminated her protection and was bringing her back to his new employer.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
It had turned sleety outside. It was hard to walk in the icy snow with a full grown woman on his shoulder. Hauling a woman over a shoulder in the open where anyone could see him was dangerous, but he took his time. A slip would be disastrous. And the weather was keeping everyone indoors. Not a car had passed since he’d parked at the curb.
He reached the rental, bent at the knees and put her in the front passenger seat. He’d thought of and discarded the idea of placing her lying down on the backseat. On the one hand, she’d be out of sight. On the other, if by some wild and disastrous chance he was pulled over, a passed-out woman buckled in next to him was easier to explain than an unconscious woman lying on the backseat. Plus this way he could keep an eye on her. He wasn’t entirely certain of the effects of these pre-loaded syringes. He’d been told that the range of unconsciousness went from an hour to three hours, but of course metabolisms differed. He’d keep another syringe handy and if she showed signs of coming round, he’d simply jab her again.
So he struggled to get her sitting in the passenger seat, but finally managed. The seat belt went around her and he stood, a bit winded, but happy with the results.
The seat belt held her tightly upright, head slumped forward. She looked like an attractive woman who’d been partying too much. Happened all the time.
Perfect.
Frederick got quietly into the rental and drove off, now happy for the heavy snowfall which had masked him walking out from Anne Lowell’s house with her over his shoulder.
All in all, this was shaping up into a most satisfactory and remunerative job.
The world was pain. Every kind of pain there was. Sharp and dull. Piercing and throbbing. More or less everywhere, but concentrated in pounding pulses in his shoulder.
Jacko tried to lift his head to look at his shoulder and while he was at it, try to figure out what the fuck was going on. But when he lifted the back of his head an inch, it was too much. His head thudded back to the floor and he blacked out.
The next time he was able to orient himself better. Lauren’s house. Floor. Blood. His own. He tried to lift himself up on his elbow and blacked out again.
He swam back to consciousness. He was able to lift his hand enough to glance at his diver’s watch to see it was twenty one hundred hours before blacking out again.
He came to fifteen minutes later. The floor felt tacky with blood. His. He had time and place and pain. But this time he realized Lauren was gone and the pain was nothing. His body screamed protest as he lifted himself up on the elbow of the uninjured shoulder, came up on a knee, then up on shaking legs.
He nearly blacked out again but hung on grimly because no Lauren was infinitely worse than any pain his body could feel.
He’d spent a year in the most intense training in the world in which DIs screamed continuously that pain was weakness leaving the body. This didn’t feel like that, though. This was pain and weakness. But if he’d learned one thing in training and in his eight years as a SEAL, it was that he was stronger than his body. When his body told him to quit, he didn’t.
And if Lauren was missing, he couldn’t.
Lauren.
He turned his head, seeking. It hurt. He ignored it. Blackness was at the edge of his vision but he scanned the room as fast as he could, looking for her. He was thorough but he knew she wasn’t there. She was gone. The house had an unmistakably empty feel to it. Humans emanated some kind of vibration he was sensitive to. He was always point man going in and could always tell if he was entering a space that was inhabited or not.
Something on the floor. He bent to pick it up, nearly blacked out. He stood, swaying, for a full minute until blood could flow back to his head. He’d been wounded many times and knew that he was suffering from blood loss. But…fuck that. He didn’t have time to get medical care, a transfusion. Because what he was holding was ….
Memory rushed back in. Lauren, carrying her cell, tapping in notes as she walked to the door. What he held was shards of plastic, a lithium battery. Someone had taken Lauren’s cellphone and broken it. The white plastic had dark marks, some mud. Probably from a shoe.
The last few minutes before blacking out bloomed in his head. Lauren, answering the door. He’d been right behind her. She’d started to greet the man—tall, slender, dressed in expensive clothes, stylish black fedora—and the man had pivoted without hesitation and fired at Jacko.
Getting rid of Lauren’s protector first.
Even if Jacko’d had time to react, he couldn’t have because his weapon had been back in the bedroom. He’d done that deliberately because he knew Lauren wanted this job, and knew she probably wouldn’t get it if by her side was a glowering guy who looked like him, hand on sidearm.
Scare the shit out of her client.
Except that if Jacko had had his weapon, he’d have nailed the fucker for sure and Lauren would be exactly where she should be—by his side.
Instead of gone.
He could barely think. Spots danced in front of his eyes. He could block out the pain—no one could be a SEAL and not know how to block pain—but he was losing blood and was fucking weak.
He stepped forward toward the front door, not knowing what he was doing, without any kind of a plan, just knowing that she must have gone out through that door with Fedora Man and so like a dumb animal he was going to follow. But his body betrayed him. His legs wouldn’t hold him and he slipped to one knee. His head drooped forward, head too heavy for his neck to support it. He watched as blood oozed out of his chest and dripped to the floor. Dripped, not spurted. Not arterial.
Dumbass. Of course. If it had been arterial blood he’d be dead by now. He shook his head sharply, trying to shake himself awake.
Took a deep breath. Could do it. No pulmonary atelectasis. Not lung shot. But deep tissue damage nonetheless.
Fedora had killed Lauren’s cell thinking she couldn’t be tracked. But Jacko had a tactile memory of tracing the chain around her neck, feeling the silky softness of her skin beneath his fingers. He could follow her, but he couldn’t do it alone.
He pulled out his own cell, punched a number-
“Yo. Jacko my man. ‘Sup?” Metal’s deep voice sounded reassuring. Jacko clung to it the way a mountaineer clings to a fissure in the rock.
“Shot,” he gasped.
“Where?” Metal rapped out, all focus. Like Jacko he could react instantly to an emergency.
Where? Jacko could barely focus. “Lauren’s…house.”
An electronic beep and he could hear a vehicle start up. “No. Where were you shot?”
“Shoulder.” He took in a painful breath. “Twice.”
“Okay, I’m on my way?—”
“No!” Jacko tried to shout but it came out more a low groan. “Not…here. Someone…took Lauren.” Saying the words was more painful than his wounds. He sent the tracker code to Metal. “Sending tracker…coordinates. We…go…”
He stopped, wheezing, unable to say anything more. But he didn’t need to.
“Got it. She’s on Bleecker Avenue.” Silence. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Mm.” Bleecker led to Washington which was then a straight shot to the airport. If she got into the air, she was gone. The tracker had a radius of only ten miles. “Bad.”
“Yeah. I’m on the other side of town, it’ll take me some time. Weather’s bad.”
“Taking…bike.”
“Negative,” Metal said sharply. “You’re wounded. I can make it faster than you.”
“No.” Through the haze, only one thing was crystal clear, surer than death. He was going after Lauren. He was going after his woman. “Taking…bike.”
He had his bike loaded on the back of his SUV. It would make faster time than the vehicle, he could take shortcuts. He was trying to map a route in his head when Metal spoke again.
“Any crackling sounds when you breathe?”
He breathed in. It was hard to hear if his chest crackled over the sound of blood pounding in his head. “No,” he said finally after a couple of breaths.
“You’re not lung shot. How much blood have you lost?”
Jacko was staggering to the door, opened it, looked out in the snowy darkness toward his vehicle. It looked miles away. A continent away. “Some,” he said.
“Jesus, Jacko. Don’t do it. Let me go.” Jacko could hear a tap. “I’m 8.7 miles away. Maybe I can make it.”
Jacko was 5.2 miles away. But even if he’d been a thousand miles away there was no question what he had to do. “Going.”
Jacko could hear a big gusty sigh. “Christ,” was all Metal said. “I’ll check in. Put your cell on the holder in the handlebars. I’ll keep track of both of you. Weather’s bad, Jacko.”
Jacko stopped for a second, tilted his head to the sky. Massive snowflakes were falling, dulling sound, dropping visibility. He turned slowly to look behind him, at the slug like tracks of his feet. He was shuffling. Not good.
“Yeah. Weather’s…a bitch.”
“It’ll slow him down too. Who’s the fucker who took Lauren?”
“Can’t…talk.” Jacko was almost as the back of his SUV. He reached it and leaned against the side of the vehicle for a long moment.
“OK. Doesn’t matter,” Metal said. “Fucker’s going down.”
Jacko nodded, unable to speak, and tapped end of call. He pulled up the tracker app superimposed on a map of Portland. She was six miles away. There was no way he would allow her to get to the ten mile mark. No way he was going to lose her.
He pulled open the back of the SUV, pulled down the bike.
Pulling his bike out and rolling it down to the ground was something he’d done thousands of times. He didn’t even think of it. He wanted his bike on the ground, a little effort and then there it was, ready for him to ride.
Now? Now it could have been on Everest. On the fucking moon. God, only one way to do this. The hard way. He reached out, grabbed the back tire and pulled as hard as he could. The bike came tumbling down, landing on its side.
If anyone else had dared to do that to his bike he’d have killed him.
He stood, panting, looking at his bike lying on its side like a wounded beast. Snow was already sticking to the deep red paint, red and white. Just like the ground at his feet. Red and white.
He was losing a lot of blood. He needed a pressure bandage. He leaned against the side of the van again, catching his breath, wondering where in the hell he could find a pressure bandage.
In the back of the SUV, that’s where. He kept his riding leathers neatly folded inside a gym bag. Wrestling the gym bag to the edge of the seat, he pulled out his Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket. It even had armor plates in the front in case he ever got shot. Bit superfluous now.
His emergency aid kit was in the bag. He opened it, pulled out a pack of Quikclot, ripping it open with his teeth and applied it. His jacket was deliberately tight so there’d be no wind resistance. He placed a clean tee against the wounds under the jacket. Hurt like a fucker to zip it up but he finally did it.
Best pressure bandage in the world. At least it would stop the bleeding.
He checked his cell. Lauren was 8.7 miles away. In a little while she’d be lost to him. Portland airport was big. Fedora wouldn’t put her on a commercial flight but he could have a private jet anywhere on the tarmac. Jacko would never find her. He couldn’t stop every plane in the airport, though he was tempted. Just shoot up every single engine until he found her.
Speaking of which…he’d forgotten his weapon. Which was unheard of for a SEAL. A SEAL felt for his weapon first thing in the morning, last thing at night. Lucky thing Jacko believed in redundancy. He reached, wincing, for the gym bag and pulled out his Beretta Pico, put it in the jacket pocket and zipped that. Helmet and gloves and he was ready to go. Pulling his bike upright was merely a question of more pain.
Piece of cake.
The snow was coming in flurries mixed with ice so thick it pinged against his helmet. Soon, it would be hard for a car to make it over the streets, but not his bike. He pulled out his cell again and saw that Lauren was 9.1 miles away but the speed of the vehicle she was in had slowed.
He switched on his engine and felt the familiar power between his thighs. He was good on his bike, the movements familiar and smooth. He pulled out, pulled away, chest touching the task, making his corners tight because he had a lot of ground to cover and not much time.
He kept his cell on a special holder on the handlebars, keeping Lauren’s position and his position on the screen,with an overlay of a map of Portland. It shifted as he car made its way down Bleecker. Slowly. Well, there was an app for that. Speed. Jacko was all about speed, especially on his bike. He’d topped 150 miles per hour on race tracks. Speed had always been his friend.
Except—when he raced, he had full use of his body. He steered with the handlebars but with his body, too. And right now, his body wasn’t responsive. His ride side hurt like a bitch. Hurt was the wrong word. It felt like someone was sticking red hot knives in him. He could ignore pain but he couldn’t ignore the weakness. Without the full use of his right arm and hand, his steering was seriously compromised.
No matter. He’d have gone as fast as he could even if someone had lopped off his right arm, because with each gear change and increase in speed the space between the green dot that was him and the red dot that was Lauren decreased. Nothing else existed in his world but that red dot and watching while he raced to her, gaining on that fucker who’d kidnapped her.
He had to get to her, had to. He had to save her because the future without Lauren was this vast featureless emptiness he couldn’t face. He’d never had a woman of his own, hadn’t wanted one. But Lauren? Now that he had her he would never let her go. Couldn’t. She gave his life color and warmth. A reason to come home. It felt like he’d just now discovered sex though he’d been fucking since he was thirteen. That wasn’t what he had with Lauren. What they had was something else completely. He’d found it only with her, and it would disappear out of his life forever if she died.
If she died, his entire life would be one long wait to die himself.
And he had’t told her he loved her.
That was what burned most of all, the thought that if she died, she’d die not knowing what he felt. Bad enough that he’d wasted four fucking months circling her, scared shitless of her.
He wasn’t going to lose her, not now, not when they had a life to build together.
The roads were icy but he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly how to get to that red dot that could just as well have been his heart. He had maps in his head. He’d never been lost after seeing a nap, even once. And since he’d been in Portland he’d crisscrossed it endless times. He cut through a city park, knowing exactly where the benches were, where the fountain was.
He crossed through backyards, knowing which had fences and which didn’t.
With every passing minute, he drew closer. It was as if the red dot was standing still and he was an arrow that had been shot from a powerful bow.
Down two side streets the wrong way, jumping over a small meridian, going into a controlled slide, then upright again and shooting through a parking lot, sailing over a small ditch right onto Bleecker. It was almost empty. Good.
He checked the cell. They were separated by the width of a finger. If it weren’t snowing, he’d be able to see the car. He increased his speed slightly, bent lower and… there it was! Two red taillights, the fucker braking constantly.
He hadn’t told Lauren he loved her. He was going to, as soon as he could.
But first?—
Jacko understood cars and bikes and vectors. He knew exactly where to ram the car. If Lauren weren’t in it, he’d ram the shithead right off the road, but he had Lauren so this would go more slowly than Jacko liked. Though the end result was never in doubt.
He’d lost a lot of blood. He was conscious because he narrowed his focus so tightly he was only aware of the back fender and the two red taillights looking like the eyes of Satan.
He kicked it up a gear and rammed the car from the right. The driver overreacted, braked heavily, started to spin. Fucker didn’t know how to drive in the snow.
Jacko rammed the other side and felt the driver lose control. He turned right and came up against the passenger side window and there she was! Slumped against the window, face pale in the darkness. It was impossible to see whether she was conscious or not.
The gun in his pocket felt heavy. Such an easy thing to take it out and shoot the driver point blank in the face. His fingers itched to do it.
But the driver had sped up, was fishtailing. Jacko couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that his shot would hit the driver and not Lauren and he wasn’t going to shoot unless he had that certainty. Even if he came up on the driver’s side and shot him in the head he couldn’t be absolutely sure it wouldn’t go through the son of a bitch’s head and his Lauren, too.
He was used to problems that could be solved with a well-aimed shot but this wasn’t one of them. He had to stop the driver with his bike.
Hold on, Lauren , he thought. I love you.
Lauren’s eyes fluttered open briefly, then closed. She licked dry lips and tasted bitterness in her mouth. Her head hurt fiercely, as if someone had hammered nails into her skull. Shifting her head slightly hurt so much she thought she was going to throw up. She swallowed bile, knowing instinctively she couldn’t throw up, it would be dangerous.
She didn’t know where she was but a sense of menace was in the air, so powerful it penetrated even the fog in her brain.
She hurt all over but especially on the side of her neck, a deep pointed pain.
She was in a car. The sound of the engine was a low background rumble that rose when the vehicle took corners. When the car turned, she shifted in the seat, rolling with the motion. She didn’t try to resist but rolled loosely with it. For a second the car slid, tires no longer gripping the road, out of control. A vicious curse came from the front seat. A male voice. Not Jacko.
Of course not Jacko. Jacko would never have her hurting.
Jacko!
Memory rushed in. Opening the door, Suzanne’s client entering and, in a move so outrageous she didn’t believe her eyes, pulling out a gun.
Shooting Jacko.
Jacko on the ground, lifeless. And then the man sticking her with a needle and then darkness. He’d killed Jacko and then drugged her. She lifted a hand very slowly to her neck and felt a slight weal in the skin. It hurt. A puncture wound.
But it didn’t hurt as much as the thought of Jacko, dead. She closed her eyes, tears seeping out of her eyes, trickling down her face.
Whoever had taken her obviously thought she was still out. She shouldn’t cry. She couldn’t afford to cry, if he turned around and saw tears he’d know she was conscious.
It made no difference. Jacko was dead and she didn’t care.
Like some gravityless moon, she understood his importance in her life by its absence. She understood how much she looked forward to living with him, having him in her life. His massive quiet presence, that stoic face which never betrayed any emotion. Though she was starting to read him. He surrounded her with loving care, always there, and now he was dead.
Killed by the man driving the car.
Son of a bitch.
She was weak still, with no strength in her arms, eyes almost unable to focus, suffering from the effects of whatever it was she’d been injected with. She was helpless. Her only hope was to gather strength as quickly as she could, let the drug dissipate in her system, gain consciousness and then try to kill the sick bastard driving even if it cost her own life.
He wasn’t going to kill Jacko and get away with it. Not while she could draw a breath. She was perfectly willing to die to bring him down and she didn’t care. The bastard had killed a magnificent man, her man, and he was going to pay. She’d pay the price, gladly. The world felt bleak and dark without Jacko in it.
So she played possum while trying to draw deep breaths, keeping it quiet. The fog in her brain slowly dissipated. Her hands and feet had been numb. Now feeling was coming back. Luckily he hadn’t tied her up, though she knew that wouldn’t stop her. If she had to destroy him with her teeth, she would.
She flexed one hand slowly, then the other. Pointed one toe then another. Took more deep breaths. Awareness grew stronger with each passing minute.
Slowly she turned her head to look out the window. There was nothing to see. They were in the middle of a snowstorm. Small globes of light slowly pulsed in the sky and it took her a while to realize they were streetlights, high overhead. The kind of streetlights on highways. The windshield wipers made a heavy sound as they tried to shift what must be heavy masses of snow from the windshield.
The car slid again as they hit a patch of ice. Dark curses in a light tenor. The voice of the man who’d called her up.
The man who’d killed Jacko.
Rage welled up inside her, an almost unstoppable wave of it, black and so bitter she thought she’d choke on it. Hot and primitive. She wanted to cut his chest open and pull his beating heart out and slice it to shreds. Make him pay in pain and blood.
Make him…
A powerful thump from behind the car. The car fishtailed, the driver cursing as he fought the wheel. Another thump from the other side and the car started into a tailspin, straightened out at the last minute.
Lauren kept her face averted, but through barely opened eyes she could see the faint reflection of the driver against the dark car windshield. Right now she could probably shout and flail and he wouldn’t pay her any attention. He was too busy trying to keep the car on the road. Another thump and he slammed his fist on the steering wheel in frustration as the car sideslipped again.
It was dark, the bright headlights throwing cones of light ahead, sleety snow visible only in the cones of light. The wind was howling, so strong it drove the snow sideways in frenzies flurries.
Another hard thump, from somewhere close to the passenger side door. The driver was screaming in frustration now. He slowed, the car on the edge of his control.
Her thought processes were so very slow but she realized that someone was trying to get the driver to stop. Why? Were they under attack? Did this man have enemies who were trying to stop him?
Stop him…
The next thump was so close it could be felt through the car door, the noise rising above the wind. She opened her eyes again and saw…she shook herself slightly. She saw someone right outside her car window, so close she could touch him if the window weren’t in the way. It was a man, no question. Dressed in a biker jacket molded around massive shoulders. The biker had a lacquer red helmet and a dark visor. There was no way to know who he was. Then the biker turned his head, looking straight at her and though she couldn’t see him, her heart knew.
Jacko. Jacko somehow come back from the dead, coming to rescue her.
The driver turned his head to look at Jacko, face frozen in a snarl. He didn’t even notice that Lauren was conscious. He only had eyes for Jacko who was in his way. Without warning, the man swerved the car to the right, trying to bump Jacko off the road.
But somehow Jacko knew because he suddenly braked, falling behind, the car swerving uselessly.
Oh God. Even knowing that Jacko was saving his own life, she felt bereft. Seeing him on his bike, a massive force of nature curved forward, huge gloved hands on the handlebars, made her feel better. As if there could be some hope after all.
Because this wasn’t going to end well. A bike against a car—death was riding right behind the biker.
There he was again, looking into the vehicle. He seemed like an otherworldly creature, faceless, barely human with the visor and jacket with plates set into it like the carapace of a dinosaur. Some creature from the bowels of hell. The big gloved hands moved on the handlebars and the heavy bike slammed again into the door and the driver screamed with rage and frustration.
The biker disappeared. Lauren didn’t dare swivel her head to see if she could catch a glimpse of him. Her heart gave a sharp punch in her chest. Had something happened to him, happened to Jacko? Had he crashed that big bike? Conditions on the road were horrible, the tires barely gaining traction, visibility down to a few feet. A car was heavier than a bike and this car was barely holding on to the road.
Was Jacko even now lying in a ditch, bleeding out? And—could that have really been Jacko or was she hallucinating, the drug making her see what her heart wanted to see. Jacko, alive and here with her.
Of course it wasn’t Jacko. Now that the fog in her head was clearing, she distinctly remembered him being shot. Maybe twice. Things were fuzzy in her memory so she didn’t remember exactly how many times he’d been shot, but that he’d been shot was beyond doubt.
Everything else was hazy but that image—it would stay with her for the rest of her days, however long she had left to live. The man pulling up his arm with a gun at the end of it, shooting Jacko. Jacko knocked off his feet, sprawled on his back, eyes closed, bleeding.
That was her last image of him before the man had plunged a needle into her neck.
So how could the rider be Jacko? The biker was someone who had to be after the driver, an enemy somehow. Had to be. It had nothing to do with her.
She heard tapping then the driver talking. The glow of a cellphone was reflected in the windshield. “Yes,” the man said impatiently. “I know the weather is deteriorating. When are they closing down the airport? Shit. Okay, I’m not far. I’ll be there in about half an hour. Be ready to take off immediately.”
Airport? Take off?
Oh God. He was taking her to a plane? A plane could fly anywhere. Doubtless he’d drug her again and she’d wake up who knew where? No one would know where she was. She’d be lost, friendless. At least in Portland she had Jacko’s friends and colleagues. They’d look for her, they’d care. John Huntington has said she was ‘one of ours’. Outside Portland…outside Portland she had literally no one in the world.
She had to escape before this terrible man put her on a plane. Her life was lost if she didn’t. But she didn’t have anything. Her hands were literally tied. How could she…
Another huge thump, the hardest yet, from the other side of the car, the driver’s side. He almost lost control of the car. Lauren could smell him now—the tangy acrid sweat of fear filled the car. She heard him fumbling with his coat and saw him draw something out, a familiar shape in the reflection of the windshield.
A gun. He lifted the gun and she finally turned her head, not caring if the driver caught on that she was awake.
She didn’t give a damn because awareness flooded through her. The man on the motorcycle keeping pace with the car was Jacko and the driver was going to shoot him. There was no way Lauren was going to let that happen. She’d die first.
She played out the strap of the seat belt.
“No!” she screamed and launched herself at the driver. She didn’t have hands but she had teeth and fists. She swung her joined fists at his face, straight at his nose, screaming herself hoarse. He lifted an arm, eyes so wide she could see the whites of them. He had a beserker where he thought he had a drugged woman. Screaming at the top of her lungs, she batted at him, trying to hurt him with every cell of her body. He shouted when she latched onto his ear with her teeth, snarling and tugging until she felt cartilage in her mouth coated with the salty taste of blood. The space was so small he couldn’t free himself to defend himself against her as she writhed and swatted and crashed against him, bringing her bound hands up to his eyes, thumbs gouging.
The driver knocked her hard with his elbow and for a second she saw stars but her rage was stronger than the blow. With a wild primitive cry she launched herself against him again and the car slid, almost floated in a soundless free fall and then they left the road and tumbled, rolling over and over down a hill. Lauren instinctively tried to brace herself but there was no possibility of it, it was like being a towel in the spinner, crashing helplessly against the ceiling the dashboard, the door…
When they finally came to rest upside down she hung from the seat belt and there was a silence that felt like death and then blackness.
She came to to the sound of a man cursing in a deep voice and metal tearing. Tears ran down her cheeks. She lifted a hand, saw something dark on the palm. Not tears. Blood.
And then her door was yanked open and the swirling snowstorm entered the car, the bitter cold hitting her like a wall. Something flashed—a knife?—and she was freed from the restraining straps of the seat belt and fell painfully down. A man was tugging at her arm, pulling her out, away from the car, over the frozen snow to a flat surface.
She could barely breathe, limbs paralyzed. She stared up at the nightsky, snowflakes falling on her face.
An alien has rescued her, big-headed, with scales and no face.
“Lauren!” Something lifted and she saw Jacko. A pale Jacko, skin nearly bloodless and white, not the rich color she loved. Hard lines bracketed his mouth. He was breathing hard, wheezing. “Say something!”
It hurt but it had to be done. She lifted a trembling hand, touched his skin. It was him. Not an illusion. It was Jacko, a trembling wounded Jacko, but alive. Could she smile at him? She tried to but she couldn’t control the muscles of her face.
“Talk to me!” His voice was deep but weak.
“Jacko,” she whispered.
“I love you.” He closed his eyes and fell forward onto her, torso covering her, shielding her from the snow, from all bad things, even from death.
And that was how Metal found them—unconscious, Jacko protecting her even close to death.