Jon leaned back and took the bag from Billy’s hands. “Thanks. How’s the girl look?”
“Shaken up, probably hasn’t eaten in a couple days, might have a bruise or two I didn’t see on first glance,” Billy replied. “Nothing obvious. Asked if she can go home.”
Jon glanced aside and saw Billy had set Steph down in a chair a few paces away. The girl had pulled her legs up so her feet balanced on the canvas edge, her arms wrapped around her knees and half her face hidden. He looked back at Billy. “Tell her we’ll have her back with her mom by sundown.” He couldn’t promise home. She likely needed a hospital. But she’d still be safer, and surrounded by loved ones.
Billy clapped him on the shoulder and stepped away.
“Sundown seems awfully close,” Jenna said quietly.
Jon offered her a smile as he squirted some wound cream onto his fingers. “I might have put in a call to that deputy who insisted his badge means something and suggested that he bring emergency services up this way. They should be here soon.”Which meant if he wanted Parker dead by his hands, he needed to get to work.
First, he needed to provide at least basic treatment for Jenna. She was his priority.
“This’ll sting,” he warned as he raised her arm a bit so that her wounded wrist was accessible. “But it’ll help you heal and prevent infection. I’ll get your wrists wrapped to cover them up, and that should be good until we can get out of here at least.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t struggle, or try to pull away, though he heard her hiss of pain as he smoothed the cream over her torn skin.
“Not to rush you, Johnson,” Alex called from somewhere behind him, “but I’ve got a splitting fucking headache.”
Jon ground his teeth. He was well aware time was of the essence.
He’d been shocked as shit to learn Alex was like him and Lance—he had an inexplicable superpower, too. It wasn’t elemental, though, and the way Alex described it, his was much more limited both in range and capacity. Still, it had come in fucking handy. The Army bastard had some sort of paralyzing stare. He could freeze anyone he made eye-contact with, holding them effectively in living stasis, but it only workedwhilehe maintained eye-contact. Once he looked away the effect wore off, returning the victim to full functionality within ninety seconds. On the flip side, all Alex had to do was keep staring them down to hold them.
Easier said than done, of course. The man still had to fucking blink, and apparently the power drained him internally.
“Thirty seconds,” Jon called back as he tore into the gauze.
Foxe spoke up from where he was crouched over someone else’s travel bag. “I know you wanna kill him, man, but it might play better if we let the dirty deputy live to take a fall. All we gotta do is make sure he can’t refute bein’ here voluntarily.”
Jon kept his touch light as he bandaged Jenna’s wrists, though every muscle in his body trembled with the tension coiled inside him. Foxe was right on both counts. He wanted to kill Parker, violently, but leaving a dead deputy could potentially be problematic. They had the handcuffs with Jenna’s skin and blood on them, and that beer bottle would have Parker’s DNA, but if it was proven the bastard never even pulled his gun…Shit.
They at least needed him to pull his gun. Get his hands fucking dirty.
Jon gave Jenna’s hands a squeeze when he finished, pushed up to press a kiss to her forehead, and stood. “Fine. It pisses me off, but Foxe is right.”
Billy snickered.
Jon ignored him. “What we need is to make Parker pull his gun. We need evidence that he chose to be here, and chose to side with the cartel.”
“I haveparalysis, not hypnosis,” Alex said with an audible strain.
“That’s fine,” Jon said, turning toward the pair who looked like they were locked in some bizarrely intense staring contest. “I’ll take the hit. He’ll shoot me even if he knows better.”
“Whoa,” Foxe said, “that’s not what I—”
“Wait.” The interruption was Jenna’s, but it silenced everyone.
Jon twisted back around to find her cradling her wrists in her lap and looking up at him with pleading eyes.
“You’re talking about … gunpowder residue, right? Or missing bullets he can’t account for?”
Jon inclined his head.
“He shot my phone,” Jenna said. “Twice. When we got here.” She licked her lips. “He parked in the lot for the tourist cave. His SUV should still be there, but his dashboard was dark the whole way, so I think he’d turned it off somehow.”
The GPS.Parker had thought about turning off his vehicle’s tracking system, but he’d still been dumb enough to park his marked SUV right in front of the main access point for the cave where he’d taken his victim.
