Jaxon approached her. She didn’t turn to look at him, her gaze glued on the unconscious Estap. The senator’s face was swollen and discolored from the beating Jaxon had given him. His naked body was covered only by a white sheet, and there were electrodes placed over every pulse point.
Jaxon motioned to the doctors to leave, and they strode from the room without protest. “I killed the two guards who escorted me, and I made damn sure it looked like I’d boarded my plane home. No one knew I was there at the time of his disappearance.”
“Why aren’t news stations screaming about him?”
“I forced him to call his wife before I took him. He told her he was going away for a few weeks. As for other government officials, they can look for him, but they’ll never find him.”
“My God, Jaxon.” The words were barely audible, yet he managed to catch the trepidation in them. “Give me your knife.” That time she’d sounded hard, determined. She didn’t wait for his permission. She grabbed the blade at his waist and swirled it by the hilt. “We’ll kill him and destroy any evidence linking the two of you together. We’ll—”
“No.” He latched onto her arm.
She’d already raised the knife, but her attention whipped to him, eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll do it. I won’t have you imprisoned or sentenced to death.”
“Killing him will kill you.”
A moment passed before his words sunk in and her fury and fear turned to confusion. “Explain.”
“The control chip is inside him. Without his living, beating heart, it will fade to nothing. You will fade to nothing.”
As he spoke, her skin drained of color. He hated telling her this and causing her worry, but she deserved to know the truth.
“I should have known. That bastard!” She ripped free of Jaxon’s hold, dropped the blade as if she didn’t dare hold it a second more, and punched the unconscious man in the face. Cartilage snapped and blood oozed from his nose.
Jaxon jerked her backward, pinning her arms at her sides. She struggled against him, and it took all of his strength to hold her in place. She would have escaped, he suspected, if she hadn’t been concerned about hurting him. “We need him alive, sweetheart. For the time being, at least. I’m afraid taking it out of him will cause it to shut down.”
Gradually she stilled. She was panting with the effort required to control her emotions.
“I’ve got men searching the world for the best surgeons. We’re going to bring them here and they’re going to operate on you and remove the chip. Estap will never be able to control you again, I swear it. And once the chip is gone, you can kill him however you wish.”
She turned in his arms and buried her face in the hollow of his neck. Tremors slid down her spine. “Surgery will kill me. The chip is now a part of me, another organ needed to function.”
“Your creators told you that, yes?”
She nodded.
“Well, I think they lied. They wouldn’t want you to remove it, so they had to scare you about taking it out.”
Now she shook her head. “That’s almost too good to believe. I mean, all my life I’ve lived in fear of the chip and its removal. Not only because I was told I would die without it but because, at times, it was my only friend. My savior.”
“I’m your friend now, sweetheart.”
“Yes. You are.” Pause. “How did you get him?” she asked, voice shaky.
“I watched him for a day, then snuck back into his office. After I’d roughed him up a bit, I dragged him through his own secret tunnels. I had him on my private jet that very night.”
“Jaxon,” she said, and warm breath fanned his chest. “You shouldn’t have done this. You risked your life for mine.”
“And I’d do it again.”
“You shouldn’t have done it the first time. What if I die during surgery? I hate to bring that up again, but you would have risked you life for nothing.”
“You are not going to die!” Just the thought sent him into a tailspin of panic. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing. For a slightest chance to set you free, I’d do anything.”
She was shaking her head before he got out the last word. “Don’t talk like that. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m invincible.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Dallas says you’re going to die because of me.”
“Dallas is a moron.” He leaned down and kissed her temple this time. “Sweetheart, I finally found something worth living for. No way in hell I’d allow myself to be killed now.”
Her gaze lifted to his. “No way I’d allow you to be killed.”
There was an unholy, determined edge to her voice that increased his nervousness. Before he could question her about what she was planning, however, his cell phone rang, startling him.
Frowning, he withdrew it from his pocket and held it to his ear. “This is Tremain.”
“Nolan’s on the move,” Eden said.
Jaxon stiffened.
Mishka’s eyes widened as if she’d heard every word.
“Seriously, he’s been homebound nearly the whole time you’ve been gone. Now you return, and suddenly he’s running. Coincidence?” Eden pushed out a breath. “He’s invisible, so you won’t be able to see him. I’m sending his signal to your phone, so you will be able to follow him, at least. Give me two minutes.”
The line went silent.
Heart thumping erratically, he stared down at Mishka, not yet ready to leave but knowing they had to. The sooner they found and killed the Schön, the sooner they could get to work saving her.
She smiled sadly, as if she knew something he didn’t. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 24
A sense of foreboding overcame Dallas, dark and shattering as he donned his weapons. This was it, the start of his vision. Doomsday, as he’d dubbed it. He chuckled without humor.
Could he stop the next dreaded events from unraveling?
Every day a little more of the future had played through his mind—it was the only thing he saw anymore—and always with the same outcome. Jaxon begging for his own life, Jaxon bleeding, Jaxon facing the barrel of the woman’s, Le’Ace’s, pyre-gun. Jaxon…dead?
I should have killed her when I had the chance. Should have killed her when I read her list.