“Including me, nine.”
“I want all of you to come out of the room. Leave the door wide open. I want everyone to move away from the door, toward the woods at the back. Stay in plain sight. Jax is going to go in and check the room.”
“Alex, I can understand that you would be a little nervous, but we—”
“If any one of you does anything threatening, I won’t hesitate to shoot them.”
Mike went silent.
“Do you understand?” Alex asked.
“I do,” Mike said. “I don’t blame you for being cautious. You’re right. We’re happy to do as you ask.”
“Thank you.”
Alex closed the phone.
“If you hear any gunshots, hit the ground,” Alex told Jax. “Understand?”
“Yes. I think they’re sincere.”
“I hope so, but I’m not going to take any chances. You be careful in there, will you? If you have any problem I’ll be there in a flash.”
Jax nodded. “Just don’t miss if this turns out to be an ambush. There’s two of us and nine of them.”
Alex offered her a smile. “It’s their tough luck to be at such a terrible disadvantage.”
She squeezed his hand as she returned the smile.
Alex watched as the people started filing out of the room. They strolled casually, talking among themselves so that it wouldn’t look suspicious to see that many people standing around in the parking lot. There were seven men and two women. They were all dressed casually, similar to but perhaps just a little better than most any tourist traveling up to Maine for a vacation.
“The trees smell so good,” Jax said to herself.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking of home. The balsam trees remind me of home.”
As Alex watched the group amble off into the lot closer to the trees and out of the way of the open door, he squeezed Jax’s hand again. “Be careful.”
She winked at him. “You too.”
He watched her walking across the lot, mesmerized by the graceful shape of her, by her fall of long blond hair, by how beautiful, how precious she was. There was no other woman in the world like her.
How he wished she was from his world.
He knew that if they ever accomplished what they needed to accomplish, accomplished what she had come to his world to do, and they found the gateway and somehow were able to make it work, she would have to go back to her own world.
Along their long trip east, when she had told him what she knew about the gateway and how it could be used to take things back to her world without a lifeline, he had asked if it was possible for him to go through the gateway, too.
Jax had said that that was one thing she was certain of: no one from his world could ever go to hers. Lord Rahl, the man who had separated the worlds, who had sent people to this world, had made certain that that could never happen.
She could come here, but he could never go there.
Alex didn’t know how he would be able to endure her leaving. Without her in his world — in his life — his world would be dead.
The group of people all took in Jax without looking obvious about it as she walked toward the room. She disappeared inside.
None of the people looked concerned. Alex thought that was a good sign. He hated to be so melodramatic about the whole thing, but he’d been fooled by Cain’s people before. He wasn’t going to take chances if he didn’t have to.
After a few minutes, Jax reappeared in the doorway. She gave Alex the all-clear. He holstered his gun and hopped out of the truck, pulling his jacket down over the weapon. Jax started ushering the people back into the room, then stood just outside the door, waiting for him while she watched them like a sergeant at arms.
As Alex joined her, she put an arm around his waist. “They don’t look like a dangerous lot,” she whispered.
“That’s what we’re hoping.”
“But that doesn’t mean they aren’t.”
“I know.”
48
AS ALEX STEPPED INTO THE ROOM behind Jax, all eyes were on them. The two-room suite was larger than the typical motel room. The two beige couches forming an L at the corner of the front showed discoloration from heavy use. A round table with half a dozen chairs sat at the back.
None of the furniture was especially elegant, but it was comfortable-looking. There was a wet bar beside a TV in a tall cabinet opposite the couches. Through double louvered doors that stood open to the right he could see the edge of a bed in the other room.
The nine people standing in a cluster in the center of the room were all grins. They looked like devout worshippers about to meet the Pope.
“I’m Mike Fenton,” a rather thin man said as he stepped forward, thrusting out his hand.
He was shorter than Jax, balding, and wearing jeans that still had the fold marks in them from coming right off the rack. His gray-and-blue-striped, long-sleeved shirt likewise looked to have been freshly unwrapped. He was grinning from ear to ear.
Alex shook the man’s hand. “Alex. It’s nice to meet you face-to-face, at last.”
Still gripping Alex’s hand, Mike swept his free arm around, indicating the rest of the people in the room. “We’re all so relieved that you arrived safely. And you would have to be Jax.”
“I am,” she said as she shook his hand. He held her hand respectfully, gazing into her eyes as if welcoming an alien from another planet to his world. Alex supposed that he was.
Alex was so focused on evaluating everyone as Mike introduced them that he knew he wouldn’t remember all their names. None of them looked like a pirate. They were all wearing new clothes that to a greater or lesser extent still bore new-clothes folds. They had apparently followed Alex’s instructions and had not gone to their homes or any place familiar.
Mike gestured to the table in the back, where papers were neatly laid out. “How about if we get business out of the way first? Get the title to the land taken care of so that everything is finalized and legal?”
“I’d like that,” Alex said.
“Do you have the fee?”
Alex pulled an envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket. He handed it to Mike.
“There’s ten thousand even.”
“It came to ninety-six hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
The man opened the envelope and counted back three one-hundred-dollar bills. He then fished around in his pocket and came up with a twenty and a five. He handed them over as well.
“There. Paid in full.”
Alex folded the money and slipped it into a pocket. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s going on with this money issue?”
Everyone chuckled self-consciously.
“Well, it’s rather hard to explain, and there are much more important things to deal with, but briefly it has to do with traditions involving this land and the way it has been deeded. The simplest way to explain it is ‘value for value.’ Stipulations having to do with the title require conventions that can seem a little odd at a time like this, but they have a serious purpose and must be followed to the letter. Payment for services is one of those stipulations.”
