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froze him in his tracks. He caught Ariel’s wrist and
pulled her to a stop beside him. She tried to snatch her arm away but he
tightened his grip and held her against his side. The noise came again, this
time barely heard over the crashing of the waves in the distance.

 
 
    Straightaway
Ariel’s blood started to tingle, though that could just have been the pressure
of Jax’s fingers searing into her skin. Then she heard the noise once more, an
ear-shattering scream, the sound an animal caught in a trap might make, and her
blood started to sing, her senses tuning into the surrounding area as if
someone had just turned the dial to high.
    ‘What is that?’
she whispered to Jax, peering into the darkness under the pier. It was almost
two am. The boardwalk was deserted except for a couple of homeless people lying
on the grass close by, passed out.
    ‘It’s them,’ Jax
said. He was still holding her arm, keeping her pressed against his side. She
pulled her arm from his grip, admittedly with a little reluctance. The warmth
of his body was drawing her in.
    ‘Come on then,’
she said impatiently. ‘Let’s see what’s going on.’
    Jax caught up
with her as she strode across the beach. She was glad she’d worn flat shoes, as
the sand would have been hard to walk across in heels. Having said that, she
rarely wore heels anyway, only when she was on a case and the case required her
to doll herself up and flirt with some unsuspecting idiot. That wasn’t the case
tonight. Though, glancing Jax’s way, feeling the reassuring warmth of his body
at her side, she wasn’t sure if flirting was entirely off the menu.
    ‘Watch
yourself,’ Jax said, taking hold of her elbow and trying to get her to slow
down. ‘I wasn’t kidding about these guys.’
    Ariel rolled her
eyes. Whatever. A Sucker was a Sucker. She could take out twenty with her eyes
closed. Jax should be able too to. He was a Blade. That was the equivalent of a
wolf going up against a pack of bunny rabbits. No contest. Maybe if he’d said
one hundred Suckers. It occurred to Ariel then that maybe Jax wasn’t as good a
fighter as he looked. Maybe the fight yesterday with the bikers had just been a
fluke. What if he was partnering her because he was actually crap at fighting
and needed her to do all the hard work for him? Or what if this was some kind
of trap? Her spine went rigid, her hearing pricking. Usually she was pretty
good at reading her gut but Jax’s proximity was muddling her mind
    Suddenly Jax was
in front of her. A wall of solid muscle. She pulled up short and stared up at
him. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, feeling a trace of fear ripple through
her. The sound of cackling laughter rose up behind him and the lights filtering
through from the pier cast his face with hollow shadows.
    ‘I don’t think
you get it,’ he hissed. ‘These aren’t normal Suckers. I didn’t bring you here
to get you killed. We need to figure out a plan. We can’t go breezing on in
there. I thought we could recce them, find out how many there are, and then
come back tomorrow once we’ve made a plan.’
    Ariel pulled a
face at him. Really? He thought she had time for that? She had moneylenders
riding her ass. She needed to help Jax with this so then they could go and earn
some actual money. She slid past him. ‘I got it,’ she told him. ‘If you want to
wait this one out, fine by me.’
    Actually it
wasn’t fine by her at all. She wanted to see how he fought because if it turned
out that he couldn’t fight then what use was he going to be helping her bring
in the bounties she needed?
    Jax caught up
with her again and when she glanced at him out the corner of her eye she saw
his jaw was set and his eyes were glinting with that same light she’d seen in
the alleyway before the fight with the bikers. He was gearing up for a fight.
In his hand she caught a glimmer of silver. Saw discs. Nice.
    A high-pitched
scream jolted her to a sudden standstill. Shadows wavered