The Law of Nines

“I want to find us a motel or something, some place we can rent a room for the night. We’re near the interstate highway. It shouldn’t take long to get safely away from here before we stop. We both need rest and time to let these drugs wear off.”

“I’ll wait, then,” she said. “Before we sleep, though, I’m going to need a needle and thread.”

“What for?”

“To stitch up that gash on your arm. It needs to be closed up.”

Alex nodded, but he didn’t like the thought of having her sew on his arm, at least not without some kind of local anesthesia. He didn’t want to stop in at an emergency room, though. They would have questions. He wasn’t in the mood to think up answers to questions.

He tested his injured left arm a little. It was beginning to ache in earnest. The pain throbbed with each beat of his heart. He couldn’t hold the wheel with his left hand alone. The pressure needed to turn the wheel hurt.

He glanced in the rearview mirror to look back at the fire.

Just as he did, there was a soft thud to the air that Alex felt as a thump deep in his chest. He’d felt that thump before.

In the mirror he saw a dark smudge swirl in the air behind them in the back seat. As soon as he saw it, the indistinct, dark swirl of night changed into a vortex of vapor.

The vapor condensed into a shape.

A man in a dark leather vest and no shirt lunged at them from out of the back seat, from out of another world.

42.

THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT threw an arm around both Jax’s and Alex’s necks at the same time, pulling them back against the seat, choking them both. His bare arms were massively muscled. Alex’s vision dimmed down to a narrow, dark tunnel. The powerful arm was cutting off his blood supply as well as his air. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jax’s arms and legs flailing and he knew the man was hurting her even more.

Alex tried to reach the steering wheel. The way the man’s arm had him around the throat, pinning him back to the seat, Alex couldn’t pull away. Try as he might, he couldn’t reach the brake, either.

He was only able to sporadically get his fingertips on the steering wheel. The truck slowly started taking an arcing course across the road, toward oncoming traffic. As Alex brushed the wheel with his fingertips, it started back the other way, toward the right side of the road. He struggled to correct with the wheel to keep them from crashing into a light pole.

He couldn’t get a breath. He tried to twist enough to steer with his left hand and pull at the arm with his right, but the fingertips of one hand weren’t enough to steer. Alex used his knees to steady the wheel and switched to using both hands to try to pry the arm away. He reached back, trying to get ahold of fingers, but couldn’t reach them.

His lungs burned for air. He was starting to have difficulty focusing his vision. He knew that if he didn’t do something, and soon, he would lose consciousness. If that happened, it was all over—they would have him.

He could hear strangled sounds coming from Jax as she desperately struggled to breathe. Out of the corner of his eye Alex could see her face turning red. He could also see that her arms were hardly moving anymore.

The powerfully built man growled with the effort of keeping his arms clamped around them both. In the position he was in, Alex had no chance to gain the advantage.

He tried again but couldn’t reach the brake. He couldn’t reach the gas pedal, either, but since they were going down a slight grade the truck wasn’t slowing.

In his rush to get away from the hospital, he hadn’t retrieved his gun. He had figured that once they were safely away he would then get it out from under the seat. He had thought that if any of Vendis’s men tried to stop them he would have enough time to get the gun out. He hadn’t figured on a man materializing in his back seat.

He could think of nothing else but to try to reach under the seat for his gun. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t get to it. It might as well have been a mile away.

He abandoned his attempt to get the arm off his throat. He pushed back against the man behind them to force him to change his hold a little. Just as the man loosened and moved his arm a bit to improve his hold, Alex lunged forward with all his strength.

Alex managed to grab the steering wheel with both hands.

He immediately cranked the wheel to the right. They were going slow enough that the front tires stuck and the truck cut violently to the right, hitting the curb and going up over it.

Between the sudden right turn and bouncing up over the curb, the man was thrown hard to the left. He probably didn’t know anything about riding in a truck; it didn’t appear that he was prepared for such a maneuver. He had such a hold on Jax that as he was thrown to the left he took her with him, pulling her by the neck, half between and half over the seats.