As he got up to get into the other bed, she softly called his name. He turned back and knelt again beside her bed.
“What is it?”
“Alex. . I was so afraid there, at that place.”
“I know. I was terrified for you.”
“I thought I was going to die alone, like so many others Vendis has gotten his hands on. I thought my life was at its end.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “I was so afraid. It hurt so much and I was so afraid. I’m so far from home. I don’t know if I will ever see home again. I feel so alone.”
Alex gently squeezed her hand. “I know.”
When he started to get up, she pulled him back down by his hand. “Alex, would you lie close to me so that I don’t feel alone tonight? Just lie by me so that I’m not alone?”
Alex smiled. “Sure.”
He kicked off his shoes, turned off the light, and lay down on his back beside her. He pulled the bedspread up over them both. Jax nestled close to him.
“Hold me? Please? Just hold me?”
Alex didn’t say anything, fearing to test his voice. He would have given anything, paid any price, just to hold her.
As he slipped his arm around her, she laid her head on his shoulder. With his other hand he gently smoothed her hair.
If she noticed how fast his heart was beating, she didn’t say so. Alex kissed the top of her head. “Sleep well.”
Her breathing slowed and evened out almost immediately. She was asleep in mere moments.
Alex stared at the ceiling in the near darkness, not wanting to go to sleep lest he miss a moment of the simple bliss of holding her in his arms.
But he didn’t last long before he drifted off, the whole time thinking of the precious woman so close to him, safe, for the moment.
44
WITH A FINGER, ALEX OPENED the curtains just a crack to peek out, looking for anything out of place. It was a heavily overcast, gray day, but it wasn’t raining. The Cherokee was parked right outside their room. He didn’t see anyone out in the parking lot who looked suspicious. He reminded himself that Dr. Hoffmann, the nurses, and the orderlies at Mother of Roses had never looked suspicious to him.
They didn’t all look like pirates.
Alex felt wide awake, truly awake, for the first time in what seemed like days and days. He was foggy on exactly how many days it had been, but he knew that the whole ordeal at Mother of Roses hadn’t been more than a few days. Some of the things that had happened didn’t seem real. The reality of how many people had died — how many people he had killed — was hard to wrap his mind around. It felt like he was coming out of a long, dark dream filled with endless terror.
He felt a profound empathy for his mother’s years of being lost in that living limbo. He was saddened that she had never been able to escape that private, lonely hell, that she never had a chance to live her life. He was heartbroken and angry that people from another world had come here and done that to her — stolen her life — and in the end had murdered her.
The worst part of that entire nightmare, though, had been seeing Jax hanging helpless in the shower at Mother of Roses, seeing her struggle to breathe, fearing what horrific torture they would subject her to, dreading that she would eventually suffocate as she hung there all alone, like so many others that Vendis had had in his clutches.
Now, after twelve hours of sleep, the drugs had largely worn off. He had escaped the nightmare, some of it, anyway. Jax, too, for the most part looked like she was almost back to normal. He had no words for how relieved he was to see her eyes so bright and alive again. She was sore and bruised, but she was alive. That was what mattered.
He heard the tub finish draining, and in a few minutes she came out dressed in fresh jeans and a red top. The color looked stunning with her blond hair, even if her hair wasn’t dry. She rubbed it with a towel, drying it as best she could.
He gestured to the little refrigerator under the counter. “You want something to eat?”
“No, not now. I’d rather get going and then eat.”
She went back to toweling her hair dry.
“You could use the hair dryer and have it dry a lot quicker.”
She gave him a blank look. “The what?”
Alex smiled. “Here, let me show you.”
He took her into the bathroom and lifted the hair dryer off its rack. He turned it on high and played it over her hair a moment before turning it off.
“See?”
“That’s amazing,” she said, taking it from his hand and looking it over. “I can do a similar thing with magic, but magic doesn’t work here. I didn’t realize you would have technology to match it.” She handed the hair dryer back. “Do it some more.”
Alex switched it back on and directed the warm air around on her hair. She turned her back to him and let him work at blowing her long fall of wavy blond hair dry. When he had finished, she turned back around and looked him over.
“How come you look clean?”
“I took a shower while you were still asleep.”
“Oh,” she said, going back out into the main room. “I thought that we agreed that ladies go first.”
Alex smiled. “I win any way I can, even if I have to break the rules.”
She gave him a meaningful smile. “I’m glad you do.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like a new woman.”
“Well, you look as beautiful as ever.”
She smiled. “So do you.”
“If you’re feeling better, then I’d like some answers,” Alex said, turning serious. “Before we were ambushed and the lights went out, my mother said that they asked her all the time about the gateway. When you heard that word — gateway — you said that you had figured it out, that you knew what they wanted.”
She nodded. “They want the gateway.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “I got that much of it. But I don’t know what it means.”
“Well,” she said as she started folding her dirty clothes and packing them into the duffel bag they’d bought back at the outlet mall, “do you remember when I told you about how I tried to take the painting you gave me back to my world to show to people?”
Alex nodded. “You said that on the journey back it simply vanished. You said that you didn’t know what happened to it, but that the experience confirmed what people had suspected, that things couldn’t be taken back from this world to yours.”
“So, if nothing can be taken back to my world, why would people from my world come here? Why would Radell Cain have been sending so many people here for so long? What could they possibly want, if they can’t take anything back?”
“Knowledge, maybe?”
“Well, I suppose that’s not out of the question, but I think that Cain wants something more basic. They’re after something specific and they’ve spent a long time and a lot of effort trying to get it. Why do you suppose they kept your mother prisoner all that time? Why do they want you?”
“Obviously, I guess, they want the gateway. But I don’t know what that means.” Alex opened his hands in a
