Chapter 1
Jinx knew something was wrong. Seriously wrong. She was sitting in the driver’s seat of the hover van, waiting for her boyfriend Rudy to come out of the store. He said he would be in and out, just a quick stop to get them some sodas and snacks.
Rudy was lying, Jinx always knew when people were lying. She got this sickly feeling inside every time someone did. It also made it really hard for her to lie as well because she would feel nauseous. But this time, she had let it go; she hoped he wouldn’t do whatever it was he didn’t want her to know about.
That hope died the moment she was jerked to attention by flashing lights and blaring alarms coming from the store.
She caught sight of a three-armed Cortemis alien male, falling to his feet and scrambling to get out of the store. Seconds later, she watched in horror as her boyfriend ran out of the store with a brown bag in one hand and a gun in the other.Holy shit!She sat frozen in disbelief. Rudy was robbing the place, and she was going to be an accomplice. Jinx wanted to leave his ass there, but she was too slow to act. Rudy pulled the door to the back open and jumped inside.
“Go Jinx go!”
Putting the hover van in gear, Jinx pressed her foot down on the gas pedal as hard as she could. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong direction. She had gotten bored while waiting and had been moving the gearshift around. She was so scared that she forgot which direction to put the gear to move it forward. Jinx didn’t even have a driver’s license. The hover van shot backwards, hitting the authority’s hover car directly behind her. Rudy and Jinx came to an abrupt stop. It started a chain reaction causing five more authority hover vehicles to crash. A black hover SUV pulled up to the side of the wrecked cars.
“Go! Go!” Rudy yelled at her. He was leaning forward from the back seat, waving the gun in her face.
In a panic, Jinx shoved his hand away from her. The gun went off shattering the passenger window next to him. A big piece of glass, instead of falling out of the van like normal, fell inward and stabbed Rudy’s thigh. He screamed like a girl and dropped his gun on the floor in the front. All she wanted to do was go home to her mother where it was safe.
Jinx opened the door to get as far from Rudy and his gun, but the van was pretty high up and she was pretty short. She hadn’t pressed the button that would lower the van back to the ground. Missing the step down she fell to the ground hard, scraping her palms. A hand gripped her arm and lifted her up. She recognized the man who held her. His horns were showing, which meant he was furious. Jinx gave him a trembling smile.
“Hi Vic.”
The man groaned. “Jinx, what the hell are you doing?” Victor, the huge bounty hunter with the horns on his head, motioned for his cousin Jagger to go get Rudy out of the van.
“I thought I was going for a date.” She shrugged.
The authority officers approached. “Vic, do you know this girl?”
“Yeah, I’ll take her in with us. You can have the other one.”
The officer was reluctant to let Jinx go, but reluctantly he accepted Rudy from Jagger. “I’ll need a statement from her.”
“Our lawyer will send a written statement over tonight. Come on, Jinx.”
She walked between Jagger and Victor who were cousins. Victor was a full Decaros, hence the horns, while Jagger was only half human and half Decaros, no horns; Jinx thought it was a shame. Both men towered over her. No matter how hard she tried to straighten herself up, she barely reached their shoulders.
Jinx knew the cousins very well. She was always getting mixed up in some petty crime or another. Her dates often ended in needing to be bailed out. Jagger and Victor worked for a local galactic bail bondsman. Somewhere along the way, she had developed a crush on the larger one, Vic.
The first time she met them, she was twelve years old. Her friends had convinced her to shoplift some clothes from a spaceport mall. While she waited for her angry mother to come and bail her out, Vic and Jagger kept her company. The guys made her laugh, distracting her from being terrified or from crying.
The next time she came across the bounty hunter cousins, she was fourteen and on her first date. The boy had decided toborrowhis neighbor’s red sports hover car to impress her. The hover car didn’t have much oil, and it was just their luck that the engine shut down across the street from an authority station.
Jinx was fifteen when she crossed them the third time. She had gone to a rave party in an abandoned warehouse downtown. There was a fire that started in the bathroom stall; luckily she had gotten out before it went up in flames. Since she had been underage, the authority took her in for detainment. The cousins were there handing over a perp and recognized her voice as she called her mother.
Then there was the time…
“Jinx! Are you listening to me?” Vic asked loudly.
“What?”
Vic opened the backseat door to the black SUV for her. Jinx climbed in and sat down. She hated seeing the disappointed look on his face.
“I asked what you were doing with that scumbag. He’s got three warrants out for his arrest, he jumped his bail, and he’s twenty-six years old. You’re onlysixteen.” He pulled out a first aid kit and treated the scrapes on her palms. The spray he used healed it up immediately. He rubbed a finger over the fading cuts tenderly. It always surprised Jinx that someone as large and intimidating as Vic could be so gentle.
She couldn’t help but smile up at him. “You remembered my birthday, you sent me a card.”
Vic rolled his eyes and looked at his cousin. “Say something to her, please.”
Jagger chuckled as he climbed in the back next to her. “Honey, you’ve got to make a change with your life, or you’ll end up a career criminal, locked up for life or worse—dead.”
