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Easy dragged her attention back to him. “As in pool shark.”
“Like the blowup floatie kind?” she asked, her brow wrinkling.
Easy couldn’t help it. He laughed. Shark was nothing like a cuddly blowup float. He was a predator both in the water and out of it. Shark just scoffed.
“No, like the master at billiards kind,” he said, setting her hand on Shark’s shoulder. “But don’t be fooled. He still has the pointy teeth.”
“Oh,” she said, her confusion melting away as her brows lifted. “That’s his call name.”
“Right. You got it. When he moves, you move. When he stops, you stop.”
“And if I say get down, get down, lady,” he said gruffly.
She looked at Easy, her eyes dark with doubts in her battered and bloody face. Regardless of her stubbornness, she’d suffered life-threatening physical and mental pain and his protective instincts came out in full force, even as he tried to keep everything tamped down. Getting emotional in the field was a recipe for disaster. She stared at him for several moments, then rubbed her upper arms and looked away. Finally, her voice soft and uneven, she said, “You’re not leaving me, are you?”
Recognizing the significance of her question, it was clear she had imprinted on him as her rescuer, and she was searching for reassurance. He said fiercely, “We’re not going to let you down. We’ll get you home safely. I’m going to be right behind you, covering our rear.”
Rubbing her arms again, she turned back to Shark and clasped his shoulder, her voice so soft he could barely hear it. “I know all about ‘covering your ass,’ believe me,” she murmured. Her eyes narrowed, all signs of fear gone. “Let’s go get my shoes.”
Easy turned his back to her as they moved out into the hall, walking backward while he maintained vigilance behind them.
They reached the intersection where they were supposed to turn right but had to go left instead. Their window closed just a fraction more.
“You guys are on your own,” the guard said.
“Another K if you take us there yourself.”
The guard hesitated and looked hard at Jack. “The warden wants her, and he’ll do anything to get her back. You should really go.”
Jack lifted her chin and Easy took that as her answer.
Shark pulled out a wad of cash and counted out the bills, waving it at the guy.
The guard snatched it and started down the hall, mumbling in unintelligible Spanish. The only word he caught was “loco.” Yeah, this was damned crazy.
They reached the locker room faster than they would have if the guard hadn’t helped. This place was a maze and some of the changes weren’t on a map. When this spiraling building had been converted into a prison, the government literally turned just about anything into cells. They wouldn’t have found Jack’s cell so quickly if they didn’t have the guard’s help.
“This is it, andadios,gringos.” He disappeared down the dimly lit hall.
The door was open, and Shark went in with Jack still clinging to his shoulder. Easy closed it behind him. Jack let go of Shark’s shoulder and walked toward a bank of lockers. She looked around as if she was trying to get her bearings.
“Speed it up, lady,” Shark growled. He looked at Easy, and he swore he could hear that window shut with a thump of doom.
Jack moved gracefully toward a row of lockers, then she stopped in front of one of them. She turned. “This is it,” she got out as the door across the room opened. A woman walked in, and she took one look at Jack and launched herself at her former prisoner. She hit her and both women went down to the floor. Shark swore as Easy headed toward the tussling women. Shark intoning in his ear, “I enjoy a female cat fight as much as the next man, but they’re going to alert every fucking guard in here.”
* * *
Jack turnedin time to see the female guard, Lopez, barrel toward her and had just enough time to brace herself for the impact. She went down hard beneath the bulk of the stocky woman. She used her feet to push away from her and rose up. Lopez came up swinging. A wild roundhouse punch that Jack was too slow to duck. It connected with her jaw and pain exploded all along already painful nerve endings, sending the inside of her lip against her teeth. She slammed against the lockers, tasting bitter, metallic blood.
Jack awkwardly blocked another wild swing and ducked another one, stumbling backward. She jumped at Lopez, and they grappled.
Jack’s perception had become strangely distorted, her vision zooming close up on Lopez’s face and the hate and jealousy blazing from her eyes. Jack could hear nothing but a loud roar of her pulse in her ears, feel nothing but the same bitter hatred filling her with the need for retribution and payback. This woman had tortured her for no damned reason and had taken her property with a sense of entitlement, as if Jack was weaker and deserved to be robbed.
Jack wanted her property back, especially those shoes, a concrete, elegant reward for her hard work. She would rather die than leave them behind.
Her anger swallowed her whole, years and years of impotent anger, unresolved, hidden, kept under wraps. It all poured out of her as she defended herself against the petty bitch. Took it and channeled it, relying on every smidge of it to break free of the woman and punch her hard in the face once, then again. The second blow caught her on the chin, and she dropped like a sack of potatoes. Jack backed up and reached down and grabbed the baton Lopez had used on her several times. She turned to the locker and savagely broke the lock with three blows. She lifted the squeaky, rusted tab and threw it open.
Placed on the top shelf of the messy locker were her Jimmy Choo pink croco-skin heels. With satisfaction, she reached for them just as a crack of gunfire close to her snapped in the air. It wasn’t loud at all, but when she turned to look at Lopez, she was dead. Jack saw the knife in her hand. Jack wouldn’t wish death on anyone, but this woman had been gunning for her from the moment she arrived. It was one less person out to get her, and she was both relieved and horrified at the same time.
