“I think he’s talking thousands,” I said.
“A hundredthousand? One-hundredthousanddollars?”
“Well, yeah.” Kerry shrugged.
“It’ll take me a century to pay you back!”
“Shut up! I never wanna hear anyone talk about paying me back. I have plenty of money hidden around the city, and they’re my friends, too. ’Sides, like Chance said, I’m glad to put it to good use.”
Jax calmed down, then got worked up again when he realized Kerry said Gigi would be fifty grand less than Mira.
“Why?” he demanded. “She’s worth just as much!”
“You’re right. Gigi’s precious. Mira’ll fight, though. They like that.”
Rome, who hadn’t said a word since we headed toward the city, made a strangled noise.
“Kasparian won’t hurt them,” Kerry tried to soften it, “or let the raiders knock them around too much. He won’t get as good a price if they’re damaged.”
Jax shut up after that, and Kerry did, too.
That made me leery.
He was hanging onto sanity by his fingernails. I tried to help, but couldn’t do a thing about the firestorm raging inside him. Terror for Gemma, frustration with Clem’s absence, fury towardeveryone… Well, let’s just say that, as empath, I found it hard to even sit next to him.
We motored for the Hoboken side of the Hudson. I had to stop for gas; Mira’s old girl guzzled it down like a cheap drunk. While Rome worked the pump, Jax checked his phone’s tracker app.
“We’re still on the right course,” he confirmed.
“Good.” Kerry dropped his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “I know I’m right, but I’m pretty much running on auto-pilot. Guess I used too much juice killing that raider.”
“How is the market set up?” Jax asked as Rome crawled back in the car. “Is it indoors or open air?”
“It’s in a pair of warehouses on an abandoned wharf.” Kerry opened his eyes enough to look at Jax. “I’ll go in alone. They know me and won’t think twice about it.”
Jax yammered, but Rome got it right away.
“Listen, it galls me to sit in a car and wait, too,” he said, “but I understand the logic. It’s the safest, surest, fastest way to get them out in one piece.”
“We have Kerry freaking Harker!” Jax argued. “We could tear this place down!”
“And maybe get them killed. Plus Kerry isn’t anywhere near full strength right now. Stop arguing, Jax. Waiting is what we can do to help.”
Rome was probably the only guy I knew who could see the logic of someone else rescuing his girl, accept it, and roll with it. He was far from calm about it, although Jax and Kerry probably couldn’t tell. If I hadn’t been friends with him so long, I wouldn’t have realized it, either. Under his cool mask, he seethed with the same frustration and fury that Kerry didn’t bother to hide.
When we reached the market, I pulled into the crumbling and weedy lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, thencircled around and parked close to the entrance. I wanted a straight shot to the exit.
“You can probably buy information on just about anything in there, right?” I asked Kerry.
“Yeah. Gotta be careful who you ask and how, but yeah.”
“See what you can find out about the Alchemists.”
“Or the djinn,” Rome said.
“Or the bounty on the miracle worker,” Jax said.
“OrGemma,” he barked.
