Page 11 of Dirty Gambit

“Because there’s no one else here but us.”

Not giving him a chance to respond, she threw open the door and rolled out. She left him there as she took Jessie into the room, along with a single suitcase and a battered duffle. Only when everything was in place did she withdraw the gun from her waistband and open his door.

“Please don’t make me shoot you,” she said, looking down at him. “I will and I will leave the bullet wherever it lodges for the next three days until I can let you go. By then, it will have gotten infected and I promised your parents I would return you safely.”

“You’re sick!” he hissed.

She met his gaze, unwavering. “I’m desperate and I promise you, that’s a whole lot more dangerous.”

Quietly, she unlatched the single hoop from the door handle and marched him inside with the gun a wise two feet behind him but aimed perfectly between his itching shoulder blades.

The room was like any average motel with two beds, a nightstand, a dresser, and a crappy TV. It reeked of sewer and rot, but it appeared reasonably clean.

Jessie was in the center of the bed by the window. Pillows were placed on either side of her, keeping her trapped in the middle. Lena led Jaxon to the second bed and gestured for him to sit. She snapped the cuff loop into the wood bars making up the headboard.

“What if I have to go pee?” he demanded.

She looked at him. “Do you?”

“Yeah, I do,” he lied.

Without batting an eyelash, she marched over to the dresser and snatched up the plastic ice bucket that came with the motel. She brought it over to him and set it on the nightstand.

Jaxon snatched it up and hurled it across the room. It struck the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster. On the next bed, Jessie whimpered. Her tiny arms flailed. Lena shot him glower, lips set in firm disapproval. She left him to check on Jessie. She carefully touched the baby’s chest, smoothed back her hair, and shushed her. Jessie went still. Lena turned back to him.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said. “The next three days can go one of two ways, we can make each other’s lives hell or we can get through them and go our separate ways.”

“I’m not going anywhere without my sister,” he said, rage coloring his voice. “I don’t care what happens in three days because no matter where on this planet you go, I will find you.”

Carefully, she walked towards him and stopped when she was at the foot of his bed. Her eyes were narrowed, confusion wrinkling her brow. “She’s not your sister. She’s not your family. What right do you have to her?”

“What right do you have?” he shot back.

“Unlike you, I’m her blood.”

Chapter Three

LENA

Lena didn’t sleep that night. How could she when the whole world felt like it was pressing against the motel doors? There didn’t seem to be enough air, enough space. The very room itself kept shrinking by the minute, threatening to crush her, crush Jessie.

What the hell had she been thinking? She couldn’t pull this off. She wasn’t a kidnapper. A baby-napper, which was worse. But it had to be done. She had to protect the only family she had left. That was her job.

Lena cracked the knuckles on each finger slowly, methodically. Then went back and tried to crack them again. There was only a sharp pressure the second time, but she kept nudging on the bend, her mind a million miles away.

In the spare bed, Jaxon snored softly in his uncomfortable position. His shackled arm hooked awkwardly under his head, the skin around his wrists red and raw from his tugging. Lena knew she was responsible for his pain, and not just the physical ones. She had hated the agony on Nicole’s face, the soft reasoning on Richard’s. At that moment, watching them plead with her not to take their babies, she’d been eight again watching her mom run barefoot after the cop car with her daughters inside. It had been years, but the wound felt as fresh and oozing as that first night in a strange bed.

She’d done that to Jessie. Granted, Jessie may never remember the Westwicks. Their time with her would fade and the only person she would ever know would be Lena, the person who put her life in jeopardy trying to save it.

Lena rose out of the chair she’d propped next to the window and paced to the door. Her socked feet barely made a sound crossing the three feet and back. The movement helped some of her jittering nervousness only to remind her they had a full day of driving ahead and she needed to sleep. That reminder was overruled by the taunting reminder that she could get caught any minute, that the Westwicks might have already called the cops who were scouring the backroads for them.

No,she told herself,they wouldn’t do that. They wanted their kids back. They would follow her orders.

Going back, abandoning her plans, walking away crossed her mind. There was still plenty of time for her to just dump Jaxon and Jessie back home and drive off, count her losses and pray they didn’t call the cops. But it wasn’t the cops that scared Lena. It wasn’t getting arrested or getting locked up for life. It was Travis and the things he would do to her, to Jessie, to the Westwick family if he ever caught them. There was a possibility that Travis hadn’t had a chance to see the file or didn’t care enough about one lost child to pay it any mind, but Lena knew better. She knew Travis wouldn’t rest until Jessie was his and Lena’s head was mounted outside the shop as a reminder to all what happened to those who stole from him.

Lena glanced at the duffle she’d kicked into the corner between the TV and the dresser and felt the greasy slosh in the pit of her stomach at the sight of it. It had been reckless and stupid, and the thing that sealed the nails in her coffin, but fuck Travis. Fuck him and his crew, and his foul business. He owed Lena. He owed Lissa. He sure as shit owed Jessie. That money didn’t come close to covering everything he’d stolen from Lena, but it would pave the way for Jessie to start a good, solid life away from everything Lena had to suffer, away from Travis, away from poverty and pain, and away from the fate that claimed Lissa. Once she got Jessie to Mexico, literally nothing was going to stop them. They’d be home-free. She just needed to survive the next three days with Jaxon.

At the thought of the man in question, Lena spared him a peek through the dark. He hadn’t moved, but she knew he was awake; she guessed no one had told him he snored when he was asleep. The sound was suspiciously absent from the room, and if that wasn’t hinted enough, he was too still. Even in the cloak of night with only a dull sliver of white peeking through the sheer blinds, she could tell he was holding his breath. It would have been amusing if she had the energy. Instead, she returned to the chair by the window and focused on the trip ahead. She replayed their route, memorizing every turn, calculating their speed with every checkpoint. If nothing got in their way, she’d have Jessie across the border by late afternoon on the third day. Jaxon would get sent back to his family, who she prayed to God had taken her warning about leaving seriously and were nowhere near that house. They would be crushed and broken for a little while, but they would move on. They had the money. They could buy a new kid, raise it and pretend the old one never existed.

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