“—never let you get away with this, Q. Whatever you do to me, or Lynnette, he’ll find you.”
Q? He recognized that moniker. Q was a customer of hers, a man who’d recently tried pushing her into meeting him alone outside of town under the auspices of securing a secondary location. He wanted to wonder what a busy-body customer was doing at Jenna’s apartment, but he was significantly moreworried about the way Jenna had positioned herself like a shield in front of Lynnette.
He expanded his view and saw that the women were surrounded. Not only were they facing a male he presumed to be Q, but there were two armed males on either side of them. And Q’s absolute lack of concern was a clear and fatal indicator of which side he was on in the altercation going down.
It was that moment when the words their cartel captive had started to say clicked into place.“PJ … he likes—”Jenna. Jon was absolutely sure that was the rest of the sentence, or the accurate completion of it, at least.
Grinding his teeth, Jon forced a small portion of his focus back to the present and found another round of heated dialogue had begun.
Lance was sparking again, one of the newcomers had a fresh burn they hadn’t had seconds earlier, and Foxe was informing them that the pain was their own fault in a fabulously threatening manner. The only problem with the scene was that they no longer had time for it.
On the positive side, Jon supposed he’d just learned the answer they were hunting for.
Cracking his neck, Jon turned a glare on the guy they’d already beaten up and growled, “You should’ve just talked.” With a twist of his wrist, he raised all the liquid components of the man’s insides up, forcing the accumulation through his esophagus and letting it gush out his mouth in a noisy splash that ended with the asshole dead and the argument up ahead silenced.
“Uh, Jon?” Billy asked. “Were we done with him?”
“Fuck,” Foxe muttered, “I hate when he does that.”
Jon looked forward. “We’re done with all of them.” For a moment, he considered explaining the trouble he could do nothing more than watch while nausea twisted his own stomach. Lance would punch him later for keeping his mouth shut,undoubtedly. But all any of them could do from their distance was worry, so instead, he said, “I know who PJ is, and I know where he lives. We need to move.”
The guys blinked, obviously startled.
One of the newcomers curled his lip in visible agitation and raised his gun. “PJ has plans today,” he said in passable English.
With his extra sensory vision, Jon watched Lynnette haul Jenna behind the line of trees that acted as a natural borderline for the apartment community. Watched as they dashed into the forest, diving to the left and barely dodging bullets. The same forest he’d hunkered down in to keep watch over Jenna the night she’d thrown him out. Not that she knew about that. Not that it mattered.
He let the anger rise in his voice. “I have a good idea what PJ’s plans are,” he said to the idiot aiming at him, “and I’m canceling them.” He let the words hang for three seconds, then snapped one more. “Fire.”
He didn’t feel a twinge of guilt for leaving those bodies in the dirt, unburied and undignified in their deaths. The only thing he felt was disappointment that the three clustered together had died swiftly. Each with two bullets to the head. Jon had no doubt they deserved worse, but there was no time.
He’d heard somewhere in town that Q had purchased the long-vacant Leeland Estate on the edge of Misty Glades. It was a little out of the way, but conveniently, the group they’d just put down had come with wheels.
And if he was driving while he explained, Lance was less likely to hit him with anything fatal in his outrage.
Chapter twenty-one
Hunted
“We can’t hold uphere!” Jenna hissed, her voice barely louder than the steady roll of the creek beside them.
Lynnette frowned and pressed firmly on Jenna’s shoulder. “Yes, we can,” she whispered back. It was a miracle they’d put as much distance between themselves and their assailants as they had, but the creek wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t hear the assholes eating up that distance with every passing second. “Your ankle’s too weak to panic-run on uneven ground, so we need another plan while we have the opportunity to make one.”
Jenna’s knuckles whitened where she gripped the edge of the large boulder Lynnette had instructed her to duck behind. It was one of three, in fact, that formed a nice, natural half-circle around the water’s edge. It would mean Jenna got wet, yes, but the tide wasn’t terrible and wet was immensely better than shot full of holes or kidnapped by sex-trafficking murderers. “You’rethe one they’re shooting at!”
As if I’m not aware of that.Her father would make good on his threat to break out her grandpa’s legendary switch if he ever found out what she was about to do. But Lynnette saw no other way. So, she gave her friend one more firm nudge, tossed her purse over the rocky barricade for good measure, and turned up the small but muddy embankment they’d slipped down minutes earlier. The fact that she’d thought to replace her bear spray was little consolation, really. Unless she could get the drop on all four gunmen, inevitably it would do her no good.
Lynnette gave herself a shake. If it helped her take out only one gun-toting scumbag, that was enough. And she was pretty confident she could manage that much. Unless they got a clear shot from jump.
Shouting in Spanish and the sound of unnatural movement through brush drew her attention. They’d closed in.
Lynnette studied the mud for another beat, frowned, and twisted back for the water. The ground sloped softer a short jog backward, which would also lure the assholes further from Jenna. A win-win in her book. She didn’t dare glance over her shoulder, instead praying to a deity she didn’t believe in that her friend was heeding her instruction to stay low and stay quiet. All she could do was move, making just enough noise to be believable. She wasn’t trained in stealth or subterfuge, after all.
More shouting, clearer, assailed her ears. She didn’t know the words, but she understood what was said all the same. They’d spotted her.
One of the few phrases she did understand followed—someone, not Quetzal, asking where someone else was. Jenna, undoubtedly.
Keep your sweet head down, babe.Jenna was too kind a soul to let anyone die for her, and Lynnette had no intention of dying quietly. But everything would get worse if her good-hearted friend leapt out front again.
