Chapter 1
Jinx knew something was wrong. Seriously wrong. She was sitting in the driver’s seat of the hover van, waiting for her boyfriend Rudy to come out of the store. He said he would be in and out, just a quick stop to get them some sodas and snacks.
Rudy was lying, Jinx always knew when people were lying. She got this sickly feeling inside every time someone did. It also made it really hard for her to lie as well because she would feel nauseous. But this time, she had let it go; she hoped he wouldn’t do whatever it was he didn’t want her to know about.
That hope died the moment she was jerked to attention by flashing lights and blaring alarms coming from the store.
She caught sight of a three-armed Cortemis alien male, falling to his feet and scrambling to get out of the store. Seconds later, she watched in horror as her boyfriend ran out of the store with a brown bag in one hand and a gun in the other. Holy shit! She sat frozen in disbelief. Rudy was robbing the place, and she was going to be an accomplice. Jinx wanted to leave his ass there, but she was too slow to act. Rudy pulled the door to the back open and jumped inside.
“Go Jinx go!”
Putting the hover van in gear, Jinx pressed her foot down on the gas pedal as hard as she could. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong direction. She had gotten bored while waiting and had been moving the gearshift around. She was so scared that she forgot which direction to put the gear to move it forward. Jinx didn’t even have a driver’s license. The hover van shot backwards, hitting the authority’s hover car directly behind her. Rudy and Jinx came to an abrupt stop. It started a chain reaction causing five more authority hover vehicles to crash. A black hover SUV pulled up to the side of the wrecked cars.
“Go! Go!” Rudy yelled at her. He was leaning forward from the back seat, waving the gun in her face.
In a panic, Jinx shoved his hand away from her. The gun went off shattering the passenger window next to him. A big piece of glass, instead of falling out of the van like normal, fell inward and stabbed Rudy’s thigh. He screamed like a girl and dropped his gun on the floor in the front. All she wanted to do was go home to her mother where it was safe.
Jinx opened the door to get as far from Rudy and his gun, but the van was pretty high up and she was pretty short. She hadn’t pressed the button that would lower the van back to the ground. Missing the step down she fell to the ground hard, scraping her palms. A hand gripped her arm and lifted her up. She recognized the man who held her. His horns were showing, which meant he was furious. Jinx gave him a trembling smile.
“Hi Vic.”
The man groaned. “Jinx, what the hell are you doing?” Victor, the huge bounty hunter with the horns on his head, motioned for his cousin Jagger to go get Rudy out of the van.
“I thought I was going for a date.” She shrugged.
The authority officers approached. “Vic, do you know this girl?”
“Yeah, I’ll take her in with us. You can have the other one.”
The officer was reluctant to let Jinx go, but reluctantly he accepted Rudy from Jagger. “I’ll need a statement from her.”
“Our lawyer will send a written statement over tonight. Come on, Jinx.”
She walked between Jagger and Victor who were cousins. Victor was a full Decaros, hence the horns, while Jagger was only half human and half Decaros, no horns; Jinx thought it was a shame. Both men towered over her. No matter how hard she tried to straighten herself up, she barely reached their shoulders.
Jinx knew the cousins very well. She was always getting mixed up in some petty crime or another. Her dates often ended in needing to be bailed out. Jagger and Victor worked for a local galactic bail bondsman. Somewhere along the way, she had developed a crush on the larger one, Vic.
The first time she met them, she was twelve years old. Her friends had convinced her to shoplift some clothes from a spaceport mall. While she waited for her angry mother to come and bail her out, Vic and Jagger kept her company. The guys made her laugh, distracting her from being terrified or from crying.
The next time she came across the bounty hunter cousins, she was fourteen and on her first date. The boy had decided to borrow his neighbor’s red sports hover car to impress her. The hover car didn’t have much oil, and it was just their luck that the engine shut down across the street from an authority station.
Jinx was fifteen when she crossed them the third time. She had gone to a rave party in an abandoned warehouse downtown. There was a fire that started in the bathroom stall; luckily she had gotten out before it went up in flames. Since she had been underage, the authority took her in for detainment. The cousins were there handing over a perp and recognized her voice as she called her mother.
Then there was the time…
“Jinx! Are you listening to me?” Vic asked loudly.
“What?”
Vic opened the backseat door to the black SUV for her. Jinx climbed in and sat down. She hated seeing the disappointed look on his face.
“I asked what you were doing with that scumbag. He’s got three warrants out for his arrest, he jumped his bail, and he’s twenty-six years old. You’re only sixteen.” He pulled out a first aid kit and treated the scrapes on her palms. The spray he used healed it up immediately. He rubbed a finger over the fading cuts tenderly. It always surprised Jinx that someone as large and intimidating as Vic could be so gentle.
She couldn’t help but smile up at him. “You remembered my birthday, you sent me a card.”
Vic rolled his eyes and looked at his cousin. “Say something to her, please.”
Jagger chuckled as he climbed in the back next to her. “Honey, you’ve got to make a change with your life, or you’ll end up a career criminal, locked up for life or worse—dead.”
“I wasn’t trying to find the worst guy to go out with, it just happened. Mom’s going to move us to live with my grandparents on New Earth after this,” she grumbled.
“Good. Maybe your grandfather can keep you in line,” Vic growled out. Then he softened his tone. “I know you’re a good kid. You deserve better than the creeps that you have been hanging around. I think a new place and a fresh start would be good for you. Go to school, go out with good kids your own age that your grandfather approves of, go to college, and get a good legal job. One day you’ll find a good male to mate with and start a family.”
She rolled her eyes at the storybook life he was drawing out for her. Real life wasn’t a fairy tale. “I have a long record, Vic. All minor stuff really, but who would hire me?”
Vic shook his head. “You’re a minor and New Earth has a juvenile protection law. As long as you don’t commit any crimes after you turn seventeen, your juvenile record will remain closed. If not, I’ll hire you myself once Jagger and I open our own bail bonds business.”
She perked up at that. “Really?”
Vic said “yes” at the same time that Jagger said “no.”
Vic growled at his cousin until Jagger changed his answer to a yes.
What would it be like to work alongside Vic? Jinx wondered. She had harbored a crush from the first moment the big horned man entered her life. She knew he was too old for her, but the thought that she could repay him and Jagger for all the times they were kind to her really appealed to her. For the first time in her young life, she felt like she had a purpose. She was determined to make it happen, one way or another.
“What types of things do I need to train for to be a bail bondsman?”
Jagger groaned and ran his hand through his hair, but Vic started telling her about the classes she could take. She memorized everything he said. Jinx thought he left out some of the physical self-defense classes on purpose, but she knew she would have to know how to handle herself and how to handle weapons.
She couldn’t wait to get started.
10 years later
Jinx smiled looking out the window of the space shuttle as it lifted off from New Earth to transport her to Fin Diesku, the party planet of the galaxy. She finally had an opportunity to work with the cousins. She was nervous about seeing Vic and Jagger again. It had been ten years since she saw them last. She and her mother, Jana Alexander, had moved off planet and went to live with her grandparents on New Earth.
New Earth wasn’t nearly as exciting as some of the other places that she and her mother had lived. The planet itself had one sun and the surface was similar to old Earth with mountains and oceans and deserts.
Her father, a nameless jackass, had ran off when Jinx was just a little girl and her mother had to go where ever she could find work, which was hard for someone with a child and didn’t have a degree from a university. She got to live on several different planets and meet all kinds of different alien species. Some aliens had multiple arms and others with no eyes. Her favorite planet was Decaros because that’s where Vic was from.
Moving back to live with her grandparents on New Earth allowed her mother to work part time while taking night classes. Eventually her mother finally got her dream job of working as a nurse. That had come in handy when her grandparents became sick.
She spent her summers volunteering at shelters and raising money for food banks for the poor. It kept her out of trouble, for the most part. Still, her dream had formed in her mind despite her mother and grandparents disapproval. She wanted to be a bounty hunter. Nothing else would do. It had everything a girl could want. It called for her to use her mind to hunt perps down, it offered excitement and gave her the opportunity to help someone like her find a new life. Jinx was ready to get started. She also couldn’t wait to see Vic again.
Of course, she knew that Vic was mated to someone else. She had heard about it from him and Jagger. They had kept in touch with her over the years. She was still excited to get to see him again. All those years ago, he really left an impression on her. What he and Jagger said made her think about her life, made her straighten up and to be more careful with who she was around. She wanted to do the same, save someone else from the lifestyle that almost ruined her.
“Would you like something to drink?” The shuttle stewardess asked.
She looked up at the woman and shook her head. “No thanks. How long until we reach Fin-Dieskau?”
“Another four hours.”
“I think I’ll take a nap.”
“Let me get you a pillow and blanket,” The stewardess offered, reaching up.
“Thank you, but I can get it.” Jinx stood up to open the storage bin above the seats at the same time that the stewardess did. The latch was stuck. She jerked at the handle just as the shuttle shimmied a little. The thing sprung open unexpectedly. Her suitcase inside fell out, hitting the stewardess on the head. The woman swayed; Jinx had to rush to grab her before she hit the ground.
“Oh my goodness. Are you okay?” Jinx bit her lip, frustrated. She had almost made it the whole flight without an accident happening.
“F...fine.” The other stewardesses came to help their coworker and to put the luggage back up in the storage area.
The pillow and blanket had fallen out too, but luckily landed in her seat. She sat down and leaned her chair back making sure no one was behind her first. Even that embarrassing moment couldn’t keep the happiness from her. Jinx smiled, breathing out. She snuggled up under the blanket and let her thoughts of her future life as a bounty hunter consumed her as she fell into a deep sleep.