Back inside the room, he took a moment to tug Jo's T-shirt back down, untie her, tie up Ernie with those ropes, and then make sure the arrow was still planted firmly in his chest. Nicholas then carted Ernie out to the van. He tossed him inside, satisfied by the thud of his body hitting the metal floor, and then hurried back inside to collect Jo as well. He started to pick her up, but paused as he noted the bloodstain on her shirt from the gunshot wound. He planned to set her in the front seat, and the bloodstain would draw more attention than he wanted to deal with at that moment.
Nicholas set her back, glanced around, and then moved to grab a leather jacket that lay over the back of one of the chairs at the table in the room. The female's, he supposed as he grabbed it up. It would do. Moving back to Jo, he laid it over her chest, and then scooped her up and carried her to the door.
Nicholas stepped out of the room just in time to catch Dee creeping into the back of the van. He didn't even slow, but took control of her, made her finish climbing inside and seat herself against the wall as he climbed in himself.
Kneeling in the back of the van, Nicholas shifted Jo to rest across his knees and quickly pulled the doors closed. He then scooped her up and moved to the front of the van in a crouch. Nicholas set Jo in the passenger seat, strapping her in with the seat belt, and then got behind the wheel and started the engine before reaching for his cell phone. He'd felt two pockets before recalling he didn't have, one anymore.
Cursing, Nicholas closed his eyes briefly and then opened them with a start when someone knocked at the driver's side window. Turning his head, he peered out and saw a good-sized man in his early fifties standing there, a frown on his face. Nicholas unrolled the window.
"Everything all right there, friend? Your lady doesn't look so good. Does she need help?" the man asked in a bluff voice full of both concern and suspicion.
Nicholas glanced to Jo, noting her pale, unconscious face, but the jacket was still in place, held there by the seat belt and hiding the bloodstain on her chest. He turned to peer at the man, his gaze sliding past him to the anxious woman standing nervously on the other side of the car now parked beside the van. They must have pulled up while he was strapping Jo in, Nicholas thought, and then shifted his gaze back to the man at the window.
"Do you have a cell phone?" he asked.
The man blinked. "What?"
Too impatient to be polite, Nicholas slipped into his mind and took control. The man immediately reached into his pocket and handed over a phone.
"Thanks," Nicholas murmured, and quickly punched in the number to the enforcer house. Much to his relief, it was Mortimer who answered this time. Nicholas got right to the point. "I'm bringing Jo in. She—"
"You're bringing her in?" Mortimer interrupted with disbelief.
"Yes. She's starting the turn. You'll need whatever it is they've come up with to help her through it."
"You know we won't let you leave," Mortimer warned quietly.
"I know," he said grimly, his gaze sliding past the blank-faced man at his window to see that the wife was starting to look concerned. She couldn't see her husband's face, but apparently suspected something was wrong. He shifted his attention back to the phone and said, "I ask for only one favor. Two, actually."
"What?" Mortimer asked.
"I stay with her until she's through the turn."
"Okay," Mortimer agreed.
"And I get to talk to her once she's awake before I'm taken in for judgment," Nicholas said, and then frowned and changed it to, "I want a night with her before you call Lucian."
There was silence for a minute and then Mortimer said, "Okay. I agree. What—"
"We'll be there in twenty minutes," Nicholas interrupted. "Get on the phone and get what she needs there."
He then slapped the phone closed, handed it back to the man at his window, and took a moment to rearrange his thoughts before touching on the man's wife as well.
Nicholas rolled up the window as the couple turned and moved to the door of their own motel room, and then shifted into gear and steered the van out of the parking lot. Jo moaned for the fourth time as he pulled onto the street. This time she didn't stop.
CHAPTER 16
Nicholas laid on the horn the moment he could see the woods at the edge of the enforcer property. He didn't take his hand off it until turning into the driveway at the gate.
As he'd hoped, the enforcers guarding the gate took his horn honking as an announcement of his arrival and had the outer gate open as he turned in. They'd kept the inner gate closed as a precaution, but one of the men was at it, and the moment he recognized Nicholas at the wheel, he grabbed the inner gate and began to run, pulling it open as well.