The Renegade Hunter (29 page)

Nicholas set her back, glanced around, and then moved to grab a leather jacket that lay over the back of one of the chairs at the table in the room. The female's, he supposed as he grabbed it up. It would do. Moving back to Jo, he laid it over her chest, and then scooped her up and carried her to the door.

Nicholas stepped out of the room just in time to catch Dee creeping into the back of the van. He didn't even slow, but took control of her, made her finish climbing inside and seat herself against the wall as he climbed in himself.

Kneeling in the back of the van, Nicholas shifted Jo to rest across his knees and quickly pulled the doors closed. He then scooped her up and moved to the front of the van in a crouch. Nicholas set Jo in the passenger seat, strapping her in

with the seat belt, and then got behind the wheel and started the engine before reaching for his cell phone. He'd felt two pockets before recalling he didn't have, one anymore.

Cursing, Nicholas closed his eyes briefly and then opened them with a start when someone knocked at the driver's side window. Turning his head, he peered out and saw a good-sized man in his early fifties standing there, a frown on his face. Nicholas unrolled the window.

"Everything all right there, friend? Your lady doesn't look so good. Does she need help?" the man asked in a bluff voice full of both concern and suspicion.

Nicholas glanced to Jo, noting her pale, unconscious face, but the jacket was still in place, held there by the seat belt and hiding the bloodstain on her chest. He turned to peer at the man, his gaze sliding past him to the anxious woman standing nervously on the other side of the car now parked beside the van.

They must have pulled up while he was

strapping Jo in, Nicholas thought, and then shifted his gaze back to the man at the window.

"Do you have a cell phone?" he asked.

The man blinked. "What?"

Too impatient to be polite, Nicholas slipped into his mind and took control.

The man immediately reached into his pocket

and handed over a phone.

"Thanks," Nicholas murmured, and quickly punched in the number to the enforcer house. Much to his relief, it was Mortimer who answered this time. Nicholas got right to the point. "I'm bringing Jo in. She-"

"You're bringing her in?" Mortimer interrupted with disbelief.

"Yes. She's starting the turn. You'll need whatever it is they've come up with to help her through it."

"You know we won't let you leave," Mortimer warned quietly.

"I know," he said grimly, his gaze sliding past the blank-faced man at his window to see that the wife was starting to look concerned. She couldn't see her husband's face, but apparently suspected something was wrong. He shifted his attention back to the phone and said, "I ask for only one favor. Two, actually."

"What?" Mortimer asked.

"I stay with her until she's through the turn."

"Okay," Mortimer agreed.

"And I get to talk to her once she's awake before I'm taken in for judgment,"

Nicholas said, and then frowned and

changed it to, "I want a night with her before you call Lucian."

There was silence for a minute and then Mortimer said, "Okay. I agree.

What-"

"We'll be there in twenty minutes," Nicholas interrupted. "Get on the phone and get what she needs there."

He then slapped the phone closed, handed it back to the man at his window, and took a moment to rearrange his thoughts before touching on the man's wife as well.

Nicholas rolled up the window as the couple turned and moved to the door of their own motel room, and then shifted into gear and steered the van out of the parking lot. Jo moaned for the fourth time as he pulled onto the street. This time she didn't stop.

Nicholas laid on the horn the moment he could see the woods at the edge of the enforcer property. He didn't take his hand off it until turning into the driveway at the gate.

As he'd hoped, the enforcers guarding the gate took his horn honking as an announcement of his arrival and had the outer gate open as he turned in. They'd kept the inner gate closed as a precaution, but one of the men was at it, and the moment he recognized Nicholas at the wheel, he grabbed the inner gate and began to run, pulling it open as well.

Nicholas roared through both gates and tore up the driveway, taking the turnoff to the roundabout in front of the house.

He slammed to a stop before the front door as it opened, and caught a glimpse of Mortimer hurrying out, followed by Bricker and Anders, but then shifted the van into park and leaped out to hurry around the vehicle to the front passenger door.

Mortimer had reached the van and was grabbing for the door handle as Nicholas got there, but he knocked his hand away with a growl to open it himself. Jo was his. No one else was touching her.

"Ernie and a mortal female named Dee are in the back of the van," Nicholas snapped as he pulled the door open.

"Is this Dee injured?" Mortimer asked with a frown in his voice as he tried to get a look at Jo around Nicholas's shoulder.

"No," he said coldly, undoing the seat belt he'd strapped around Jo. It had managed to keep her in her seat when she'd started to shift and flop about as the pain she was suffering had increased. As the seat belt snapped back into its holder, Nicholas scooped Jo up into his arms, adding bitterly, "She should be hurt, but I didn't have time. I wanted to get Jo here before the turn got too far."

He swung around with her in his arms to see Mortimer's raised eyebrows and bit out, "Her brain's broken, she's on Ernie's side and shot Jo."

"What?"

That high-pitched screech brought his gaze around to a thin, dark-haired woman on the steps. Jo's sister Sam, he guessed. There was a definite resemblance, though the woman was an emaciated version of Jo, all gangling arms and bony legs in the shorts she wore. With a little meat on her, she'd be almost as pretty as his Jo though, Nicholas decided, but then dismissed her from his thoughts and turned to warn Mortimer, "I controlled the mortal all the way here, but released her as I got out of the van. About now, she's probably pulling the arrow out of Ernie's heart."

Mortimer nodded grimly. "Bricker, Anders, take them to the cells. We'll deal with them later."

"On it," Bricker said, already moving to open the van door beside them.

Once it was open, he peered inside and shook his

head. "Nicholas said you'd probably be doing that. Naughty, naughty," he muttered, and then climbed into the back of the van and pulled the door closed as Anders got in the front.

"Sam, honey," Mortimer said, pulling her away from Nicholas as she tried to get a look at Jo. "Let's get her inside and settled in her room, okay?"

"Yes, of course," Sam muttered, and pulled away to bustle back into the house, leading the way.

"After you," Mortimer said quietly, but Nicholas was already following the woman.

"Did you get what she needs?" he asked as he followed Sam up the stairs inside.

"They're on the way," Mortimer assured him, and then raised his voice to be heard over Jo as the jostling made the

volume of her moaning increase. "They should have beat you here, but I suspect you were speeding just a little bit."

"Yes," he muttered, pressing Jo a little tighter and peering worriedly at her face. It was now a mask of pain and she was beginning to writhe in his arms. He'd broken a lot of road laws in his determination to get her here quickly, pushing the van to go as fast as it could, running red lights and stop signs and controlling a cop or two to get them off his tail when they'd come after him.

"They'll be here soon," Mortimer said reassuringly as Sam led them into a bedroom. "In the meantime, I had Bricker bring up rope and we can get her tied down."

"Tied down?" Sam asked with horror, stopping abruptly.

Nicholas moved impatiently around her to get to the bed as Mortimer said soothingly, "It's for her own good, honey. So she doesn't hurt herself."

"Yes, but-"

"Where's the rope," Nicholas snapped as he started to strip Jo's jeans off her.

His concern was all for Jo. Mortimer could

soothe Sam after they took care of Jo.

Much to his relief, Mortimer was on the other side of the bed almost at once, holding out the rope. Nicholas tossed aside the jeans, but left her T-shirt and the jacket that covered her chest for now as he took the offered rope. They worked together, each taking a wrist, fastening one end of rope to it and then fastening the other end to the metal bed frame, before moving down to do the same with her ankles. The moment they were at the bottom of the bed and out of her way, Sam was beside Jo, pulling away the leather coat that had covered her chest. Nicholas wasn't surprised by her gasp of horror as she saw the hole in Jo's shirt and the blood staining it, but ignored her until he'd finished what he was doing.

"What happened?" she asked with dismay, pulling Jo's shirt up.

"I told you. She was shot," Nicholas growled, straightening and moving back up to the head of the bed. He didn't even glance at the woman on the opposite side of the mattress; his eyes were on the wound in Jo's chest. It was no longer bleeding and looked a little smaller to him, and he supposed the nanos had started repairing it before doing anything

else. It meant they'd be using up what little blood she had left to do it though, and they'd be attacking the organs in search of more.

"She needs blood," Mortimer said, his thoughts moving along the same lines as Nicholas's. "I'll get it."

The immortal was out of the room before the last word had left his mouth, moving at speed. A loud thud a heartbeat later told Nicholas Mortimer had probably bypassed the stairs and jumped the hall rail to the main floor below to save time. He'd be back just as quickly,

Nicholas knew, and glanced to Sam to see her gaping at the doorway Mortimer had just disappeared through. He raised an eyebrow when she glanced back to him.

"It always startles me to see him move that quickly," she muttered for explanation and then frowned as she peered down at Jo. "What happened to her?"

"I told you, she was shot," he said grimly for the third time. The woman was obviously in shock if she couldn't grasp the concept.

"Yes, but how?" she asked with frustration. "Why did the girl shoot her?"

Nicholas settled on the side of the bed, his eyes fixed on Jo's pale, contorted face as he tried to gather his thoughts.

"Here."

He glanced up with surprise to see Mortimer at his side, several bags of blood caught between his arm and his chest, and another in his hand that he was holding out to Nicholas.

"Start her with that, but only give her one. We'll give her the drugs and set up an IV as soon as the delivery gets here with them."

Nicholas nodded, and muttered, "Open her mouth."

He raised the bag of blood to bite off one corner as Sam immediately bent over Jo from the other side to do as he asked so that he could begin to pour the thick, red liquid in.

Nicholas sat back once he'd finished. Jo had calmed a little, the moaning dropping a bit in volume, but not stopping altogether. He supposed the nanos had left her organs alone and were collecting the blood she'd just ingested to do their thing. But he knew this calm wouldn't last long. They'd use the blood to generate more nanos, start spreading out in her

body to cover the more important areas like her brain and heart, and then they'd set to work and she'd be in agony until it was done. At least, until the worst of it was done.

"What happened?" Mortimer asked, echoing the question Sam had asked earlier. "You called and said to come get her at Sam's place, but when the men got there she was gone."

Nicholas sighed unhappily and ran one hand through his hair as he balled up the empty blood bag in his other. That seemed like months ago to him, but had been only a matter of a couple hours, if that.

"I called you from the lobby after I left the apartment," he explained, his words and tone short and emotionless. "Then I went to move the van so your boys wouldn't find it. I was walking back, planning to watch the building until your men got there when Ernie drove past with Jo in the passenger seat. I ran back to the van, jumped in, and followed them to a motel. I parked at the edge of the parking lot while he took her inside and then crept up to the window to listen to see what I was up against. If Leonius or anyone else was inside, I planned to call you, but it didn't take me long to figure out there was only Ernie and a mortal woman inside with Jo and I decided I could handle it on my own."

Nicholas's mouth tightened as he silently berated himself for that decision.

He should have called Mortimer at once and

gotten some backup. Jo might not have been shot had he done that.

"What happened?" Mortimer repeated.

Grimacing, Nicholas reached out to brush a finger over Jo's cheek. "I wanted to rush in there, but Ernie told the woman to order food for her and Jo, and then said he was going to sleep. I thought it would be better to wait. Ernie would be asleep and the woman would think it was the food delivery. I could take them all by surprise and save the day," he said bitterly, and then ground his teeth and continued, "I waited, I knocked, and as soon as the woman started to open the door, I slammed it into her, and stepped inside. The woman was on the floor, Jo was tied up in a chair, and Ernie just rising up from the bed. I shot Ernie in the heart with my crossbow, heard Jo scream, and turned in time to see..."

Nicholas paused and took a breath, forcing down the lump that had risen in his throat as he recalled that moment.

"She was tied up," he said with what even he recognized as bewilderment.

"Her wrists were tied behind her back, ankles

bound together, but she was throwing herself at the mortal. The woman was lifting a gun to aim at me, and Jo-she was trying to save me, for Christ's sake, like a little bullet would hurt me."

Mortimer placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing in what he supposed was sympathy, and Nicholas finished, "The gun went off as she landed on the mortal."