Page 10 of Now or Never

The two guards laughed like that was actually funny.

Kenna’s ears rang. One of the men hit the button for the elevator and then rolled the door up like a garage. Not the first time she’d thought of jumping down into the shaft. Taking her chances with the drop and the stationary horizontal surface at the bottom.

But ending two lives in one shot wasn’t how she wanted to escape this. It seemed far too much like a gamble that she could end it fast and as painlessly as possible. She had no idea if it was far enough down that the chance she’d die would pay off with a swift end.

She also didn’t want to spend her last moments regretting what her death would do to Jax when he found out they were both gone. She wanted to see the joy in his eyes when he found out about their baby.

That meant figuring a way out of this hell.

And never giving up the fight until she did.

Chapter Five

Present day

“This is a longshot at best.” Jax sat in the driver’s seat, sipping from a paper cup. Outside, the snow that had fallen overnight blanketed the residential street in a layer of white that made it look nicer than it really was.

Kenna, in the passenger seat of the parked car, bit into her warm double chocolate muffin and tried not to groan aloud. After she’d savored it for a second and swallowed some of the mouthful, she said, “You have somewhere else to be?”

“Yeah, our land in Wyoming.”

She glanced at him, the muffin held aloft in front of her face. The street around them was as empty as it had been for most of the morning except for the odd delivery driver and the mail van. Two rows of houses, plenty of cars in drives and on the street—not the nicer ones that spoke of huge payments but the used models that were more common to people who couldn’t fork out hundreds every month for something flashy.

“Eat your snack.” He lifted his chin to her neglected muffin.

But they needed to talk about this. “You wanna leave Boston and go back home?”

“Well, yeah. You’re happier there, and so am I.”

“What happened to ‘time to get to work?’ That was yesterday.”

He snorted, shrugged. “I can change my mind. Wait ten minutes, and I’ll change it back. Or I’ll decide we should go to Hawaii.”

“Too hot any time of year.”

“Maine.”

She smiled. “A moody coastline that’s just mist twenty-four seven. Now you’re talking.”

“Hard to solve a murder when you can’t see your hand in front of your face.”

“Who says we’ll be solving a murder there?”

He smiled just enough that she could see the change on his face and leaned over to kiss her. “Mmm. Chocolate.”

She pushed his chest gently. “Get your own.”

“Bet they have those muffins in Maine.”

“If they don’t, we could rent somewhere with an oven, and you could make an über-healthy, high-protein version that’s ‘good for the baby,’ and I’ll pretend to enjoy it.”

His eyes closed for a second and his chest shook, but no laughter escaped.

“I love you.”

He kept his attention on the street. “I know.”

“Did you have a nightmare last night?” She had been shaking off the effect of hers all morning, trying to forget the images that had been burned into her mind. The ones that hovered like ghosts in her dreams.