“We need to call the cops,” Sarah said as the security team closed in on the boy. “He just attacked me.” Her voice didn’t shake. Her words didn’t break. There was no emotion in them at all. She couldn’t let any emotion affect her, not then. Not with all those people standing around in the hallway, whispering.
“She needs medical care,” Jax snapped. “Get an ambulance here!”
“No, I—” Sarah began.
“He sliced your arm. You’re going to need stitches.” He was holding her hand. So carefully, as if he were afraid of hurting her.
Her head tilted back as she looked up and focused on him. He’d come to her rescue, charging inside that room and probably saving her from—what? Torture? Death? “Thank you.”
His gaze searched hers. “You know who that kid is, don’t you?”
She glanced back at the boy. The hotel security had circled around him, and the guy was hunched on the floor. Crying. “I’ve never met him before in my life.” Those words were true. But even if they weren’t, Jax wouldn’t know. After all, she was a world-class liar.
Some of her father’s victims had been identified over the years. She had pictures of all those victims—and she’d seen the boy’s green eyes before. That particular shade of green was unusual, startling. Unforgettable. Those eyes belonged to her father’s first victim.
Gwen Guthrie.
POLICE STATIONS WEREN’T his scene. Mostly because he and the cops were all too often butting heads. They wanted to toss him in a cell. He wanted to tell them to fuck off. He usually did tell them to fuck off.
If it hadn’t been for Sarah, there was no way Jax would have been at the police station in New Orleans. But he’d stayed with her while she got stitched up, and even though she had plenty of protection around her, he was still loath to leave her.
“We’ve got this.” His shoulders tensed at that voice—a voice he knew. He turned his head and saw another LOST agent heading toward him. Wade Monroe. The guy moved with slow, deliberate steps, and his assessing gaze quickly swept the areas. Jax already knew the guy was an ex-cop, a former detective from up in Atlanta, and like the other LOST agents, the guy wasn’t exactly on Team Jax.
His mistake, of course. Team Jax was awesome.
“What the hell happened?” Wade demanded as he closed in on Jax. “What did you do to her?” And the guy actually grabbed his shirt, fisting his hands in the material.
Jax glanced down at those hands. Wade was a friend of Sarah’s, he had to remember that, and all the LOST agents had worked hell hard to protect Jax’s friend Emma Castille. Emma had gotten tangled in some serious shit recently, and LOST had protected her. So Jax figured he owed Wade and the others a small amount of leeway.
Very, very small.
“I saved the day,” Jax drawled, deliberately letting his accent deepen. He could use or discard that accent at will. He hadn’t been born in Louisiana, but he sure liked the faint drawl. “Rushed in like the hero that I am.”
“Bullshit,” Wade threw out.
Jax’s lips curved.
“You and I both know what you did to Kevin McCormack.”
He let his brows climb. “McCormack? Ah, you mean the crazy-ass FBI agent who tried to kill your LOST buddy Dean Bannon and my . . . friend . . . Emma.”
McCormack had been one psychotic asshole. He’d kidnapped and tortured his prey, and the guy had foolishly thought that Emma would be joining that prey list. McCormack hadn’t realized that Emma was family. Part of the very small family that Jax had in this world.
“You set up that hit on him, didn’t you?” Wade demanded. “Got some of your buddies in jail to take him out?”
Like he hadn’t already heard those accusations from the local cops. “News flash. Prisoners don’t exactly like FBI agents, and when a dirty, twisted freak like McCormack wound up in their grasp, I guess one of them just snapped.” And McCormack had wound up dead. One less problem for me.
Wade held his stare. “What happened tonight?”
Ah, well, at least they were done talking about the dead man. “I saved Sarah.” He tapped his chin. “Do you think she’ll be properly appreciative? I do hope so.”
Wade growled. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a dick?”
“Not really.”
But, over Wade’s shoulder, Jax had just caught sight of Sarah. She was heading toward them, and even under those garish lights at the police station, the woman was gorgeous.
Her long dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, a perfect frame for her delicate, heart-shaped face. And delicate—yes, that was the word that kept coming to mind when he thought of her. She was small, petite, with a light build and sweet curves. Her lips were full, damn near perfectly bow-shaped. She was a package made for sin and temptation, he got that.
But it was her eyes—those incredible eyes—that were really getting to him.
Deep and dark. A man could lose his soul in eyes like that. Provided he had a soul to lose.
Yes, she looked delicate, all right. All five feet and nothing inches of her. And when he’d seen that bastard in her hotel room, seen that knife in the jerk’s hand, Jax had snapped.
He stepped around Wade. Let his gaze sweep over her. She was too pale. Her normally golden skin was pallid. Her lips were bare of color, and her gaze seemed a little too stark as she stared at him.
“Sarah!” Wade called, sounding incredibly relieved. “Finally. What the hell is going on here?”
“Oh, the usual.” She pushed back her hair. “Someone broke into my hotel room, pulled a knife, said I deserved to die.”
Wade swore.
“But, lucky for me,” Sarah continued, “Jax was there.”
Wade’s stunned gaze shot to him. “Told you,” Jax said, shrugging his shoulders. “I saved the day.” He offered his hand to Sarah. “Now, you look as if you’re about to collapse. Come home with me, and I’ll tuck you into a nice, warm bed.”
Wade shoved Jax’s hand out of the way. “Back off, Fontaine.”
Wade was going to be a problem.
“The offer . . .” Jax told Sarah softly, “will always be open.” Just so they were clear.
“Get out of here!” Wade exploded at him. “When are you going to get it? Sarah isn’t attracted to guys like you.”
Oh, but she was. “She certainly isn’t interested in you,” Jax murmured.
Wade surged forward, but Sarah had already moved, too, and she put her body between theirs. “I am not in the mood for this.” Her voice was low, carrying only to them. “My arm hurts, I just got grilled by the cops until I thought my head would explode, and the last thing I want right now is to deal with you two having some stupid testosterone fight.”
Wade’s cheeks flushed.
“Jax helped me tonight. I’m grateful to him.” She looked up at Jax. “I don’t . . . I don’t like to think about what could have happened if you hadn’t been there.”
He didn’t like to think of that, either. He caught her chin in his hand, holding her carefully. “Who was the guy?”
“His name is . . . Eddie Guthrie.”
“Aw, hell,” Wade said. “I’m sorry, Sarah.”
Obviously, that guy had just made some sort of connection with the name, a connection that Jax didn’t get.
“He’s come after you before?” Jax guessed.
She shook her head. “No, this is . . . just one of those things.” Her voice became even softer when she said, “He read an article about me in the paper—about the work LOST had done down here. He saw my picture and made the connection. It’s not like I could have known he was living here. I hadn’t been keeping track of him.”
He was confused. “Why did he come after you?”
Her chin notched up, pulling from his grasp. “Like you haven’t already been digging into my past.”
He had, but—
“That kid in there—Eddie—he came after me because he’s an eye-for-an-eye type.” Her words were stilted, but she shivered as she stood there. Wade shrugged out of his coat and put it around her shoulders.
Annoying true-blue type. Should have given her my damn jacket.
“You see, my father killed his mother. Tortured her for hours before he ended her suffering.”
Jax sucked in a sharp breath.
“So it seems that when Eddie found out I was in town, he thought he’d take the opportunity to strike out at my dear old dad . . . by killing me.” Her smile was sad. “An eye for an eye. A life for a life.”