The Law of Nines

She had already saved his life. Her solemn oath seemed like a portent of some grim future lurking in the darkness waiting to envelop him.

“I could really use your help to try to figure this out,” she finally said, “but I have to know that if you come with me you won’t be a liability. A lot of people, a lot of lives, are depending on me. I won’t risk my life lugging along dead weight. I need to know that if you come with me I can count on you.”

He had protected her life the first time he’d seen her. He couldn’t imagine ever allowing harm to visit her.

“This may not be a choice you want to make, Alex, but it is the choice you face. We have spent too long here already. Are you coming with me or not?”

She leaned closer in the darkness. “Decide.”

Alex gazed into her eyes, feeling as if he could see into her soul. He had always had the vague feeling that he never really knew who he was. It had always seemed like he had been waiting for something. It seemed now like he had been waiting his whole life for this moment.

“I knew from the first instant I saw you tonight—when I saw that you had come back—that I’m in this with you. Something is going on, something I don’t understand, but something deadly. This involves me. Somehow we’ve been thrown together from worlds apart. I can’t turn away. I won’t. I’m in this.”

A small smile softened her expression. She reached out and gently grasped his arm, giving it a squeeze as if in sympathy for all the trouble that had found him, trouble she couldn’t shelter him from.

Her voice turned intimate and gentle. “Let’s go, then.”

“Wait a second,” he said as he hurriedly knelt down and threw the bedcovers back out of the way.

He reached under the bed, letting his fingers settle into the four tabs of the gun safe bolted to the floor. He pressed the proper sequence and the door popped open.

He reached in and pulled out the gun and all six spare magazines.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A Glock 17.”

Jax frowned. “A weapon made with technology?”

“Yes, technology that will help protect us.”

In the dark, he ran his index finger over the tab behind the ejection port, making sure that it was raised, indicating that a round was chambered. He always kept the gun loaded, but this was no time to find out otherwise.

“What makes the three dots glow?”

“Tritium. The sights are made with it so you can aim better in low light.”

“In my world I can make a substance that glows much like that.” He noticed that she paid close attention to the weapon. He recalled how well she handled a knife. This was a woman who knew the value of weapons in staying alive. He retrieved the molded polymer paddle holster and pushed it down over his waistband. When he holstered the gun, the retention lock clicked into place. He threw on a light jacket to hide the gun, then took several boxes of hollow-point ammunition from a drawer and put them in the jacket pockets along with the loaded magazines.

He retrieved all the cash he had in the safe and stuffed most of it in his pockets. He handed some to Jax. She looked at it as if she were seeing some otherworldly secret.

“It’s money,” he told her. “We’ll need money. You should have some on you just in case.”

Without questioning, she folded the cash and slipped it into a pocket at her waist.

“We’re going to need to get you some clothes.”

“I’m wearing clothes,” she said.

“Yes, but you kind of stand out in that black dress and cloak. If we’re trying not to be found, then I think it would be best for you not to stand out. We need to blend in, be invisible among people.”

She smiled. “Good thinking. Hurry, now. It would be bad if we were trapped here.”

The whole idea of people from another world chasing them seemed like some crazy waking nightmare to him. At the same time, it felt more real than anything in his life had ever felt.

“Do you know who is after us?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Pirates.”

21.

WAIT HERE UNTIL I MAKE sure it’s clear and I start the truck,” Alex said, gesturing out at his faded red Cherokee sitting in the drive.

Jax glanced back into the dark house from the kitchen doorway. “All right, but hurry.”

She was clearly more focused on what might be behind them in the darkness. The intruders had come through the front door the last time. He wondered if she expected more of them to arrive and come up behind them through the house.

Alex carefully ducked his head out, took a quick look, then pulled back in. The rain wasn’t letting up. He looked out a second time, checking the other direction. The Jeep was parked right outside in the driveway that ran along the side of the house.

“I don’t see anyone,” he told her.

She turned back from her survey of the darkness within. “That doesn’t mean a lot. It’s dark and hard to see in the rain. They could be hiding anywhere. But more than that, just because you don’t see anyone right now doesn’t mean they couldn’t show up at any moment.”

That was a disturbing thought. “Can they do that anywhere they want?”