It was Garrett’s special ring tone. Digging the phone out of his back pocket, Jackson answered. “Talk to me.”
“I need Dory. I’m fucked up, and I’m cornered. Help.” And then the connection went dead.
* * *
Well, that obviously hadn’t gone quite as planned. Lissa flipped off the lights in her new shop and made her way upstairs to her apartment. When she’d moved into this building four weeks ago, she’d had high hopes for this next phase of her life.
And Jackson’s tattoo was supposed to have been some kind of christening for the shop. She’d thought it would make a nice circle to give another tattoo to the last person she’d inked before giving Garrett his powers. But it had turned into a disaster. Hopefully it wasn’t an omen for how things would go for Wicked Ink.
Two years after Jackson’s first tattoo, he’d returned from his initial deployment overseas. When he’d stopped in to say hello to her and her boss, he’d been older, much more so than a mere twenty-four months could explain away, and his eyes had been haunted. All thoughts of him as a guy—as possibly her guy—had fled from her mind. Garrett had needed a savior, someone to teach him discipline and self-control, and who better than Jackson? She had begged him to take the new superhero under his wing. She very clearly remembered begging him. And now she might have inadvertently done the one thing to him she’d never wanted to do to another person after Garrett.…
Unlocking the front door of her apartment, she let herself in and dropped her bag and keys on the sideboard. She unzipped her boots and left them in the hallway on her way to the living room. A glass of wine would help her relax and regroup. Not all her “special” tattoos came with a price or she would have stopped doing them years ago. She needed to remember that, too.
Diving into a book would take the edge off and give her some distance from the situation. Originally, she’d been planning to invite Jackson up for dinner in celebration after his tattoo, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen now.
It had been cool to see him disappear, though. She would bet dollars to donuts he wouldn’t have to hurt himself to make the power work, either. But once he set his mind to something there was little chance of changing it. She knew that one all too well. He was the most stubborn person she’d ever met. And her family was filled with stubborn people. It was going to be hard to convince him that having a power wasn’t a bad thing, but she’d have to try.
There was a distinct possibility that Jackson could use his power without suffering. After all, not everyone she gave a “special” tattoo suffered from the experience. Still, she hadn’t tried to do more than small boosts since her experience with Garrett. Perhaps it was time to finally get the answers to questions she’d been afraid to ask about the art that had been passed down in her family. She picked up the phone to call her mother for advice when a knock sounded on her door.
“I need you,” Jackson said without preamble as he shoved his way into the apartment.
Her heart fluttered. “What’s going on?”
He stood stock-still in the middle of her living room, not a single muscle moving. “Garrett’s in a bad way and I can’t find him. Can you do some kind of charm thing to locate him? Do you know someone who can track people?”
“I… No, I don’t. What happened, and why on earth are you here instead of out there looking? Where’s Dory?” Now her heart was really pounding. Next to Jackson, Garrett was the most important person in her life. He might not know it, since she was often tough on him when he came in to have work done, but it was true. And now he was in trouble. Dory had to be out of her mind with worry.
“I called her, but she’s not answering. We have to get him. Can you help?”
“I can’t do anything more than you know about, and I can’t tattoo our way out of this one. The only tracker I know of lives hundreds of miles from here.” Helplessness swelled in her chest. Something in her gut told her that this was not a usual tussle—that Garrett was in real trouble.
* * *
“I am going to fuck up whoever has him.” Jackson stalked along the pavement with Lissa trailing behind him. It wasn’t a big city, but there were plenty of abandoned buildings, not to mention neighborhoods where he wouldn’t take Lissa in full daylight much less at night. Thank God he’d remembered he had a GPS tracker installed on Garrett’s cell phone. They weren’t far from him, but the place they were going to was not nice.
“I’ll help,” Lissa said, her boots clacking along the sidewalk.
“Can you, for God’s sake, be a little quieter? You shouldn’t even be here.”
“Think what you want. He’s my friend, too.”
“Yeah, and you might get us all killed with your high fashion. We’re not exactly making a stealth approach right now.”
The expression on her face told him she was holding back some kind of comment that would start a fight, and he almost sent another jab her way to get it rolling. But she wasn’t the focus of his anger, and he wanted to save the rage that was pounding through his veins for the people who had Garrett cornered.
As they neared the GPS location of Garrett’s phone, Jackson took a deep breath. A light was on in the front window of 547 Manheim Street. Jackson crouched at the corner of Smith and Manheim behind a decorative set of trees in pots. He tried to scope out the situation when really he just wanted to bust in and kick some ass.
Grabbing Lissa’s hand, he pulled her down beside him. “Keep a sharp eye out. Let me know if you see anything.”
She jerked her hand out of his and punched him in the shoulder, right where the tattoo gun had been earlier. It hurt like a bitch, but he kept his groan in, barely.
“If you’d use the power from that tattoo, we wouldn’t have to sneak around. You could be up in that room already, surprising the hell out of whoever has Garrett.”
Whipping his head around, he sent her a glare that should have stopped her in her tracks, but Lissa was not a woman to be intimidated. Never had been.
“Yeah, you heard me. You could be in there taking care of business.”
“I don’t want it. Now be quiet so I can assess what’s going on. Don’t make me regret that I brought you with me when you could have been searching for Dory.”
Her lips clamped into a flat line, but she didn’t say anything more.
No noise came from the run-down house, a little saltbox from the early 1800s whose heyday had come and gone decades ago. No shadows crossed in front of the drawn shades. He’d thought about calling Garrett back, but if his attackers hadn’t figured out he had a phone on him, Jackson didn’t want to be the one to alert them.
For a brief moment he did consider going invisible. Lissa was right, after all. It would make saving his friend a snap. But he didn’t want the responsibility of the power, and he certainly didn’t want to risk the agony Garrett’s abilities cost him. Lissa might think it wouldn’t happen, but if Jackson had learned one thing in life, it was that there were always consequences.
“You keep watch out here. See if you can get ahold of Dory. We have to know where she is.… Whatever happened, Garrett is going to need her.”
Lissa’s
