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Nothing.
Kenna kept waiting.
What was he doing? What could he possibly be…
The trunk lid flipped open.
She launched up, her finger already on the button, and realized that Kart held Javier in front of him. Anything she sprayed at him, the child would get full in the face. Tears running from his eyes, nose leaking.
“Nice try.” Kart took the pepper spray from her and stepped back, still holding the boy. “Better luck next time.”
ChapterTwenty-Three
Kenna blinked awake, sucked in a breath, and started to sit up. Little hands grasped at her arm, and she heard a whimper, though it might have been her.
The back of her head pounded. Kart had knocked her out almost as soon as he’d forced her to walk inside the house at gunpoint. After that it had been nothing but black.
She’d gotten a look at the woman in the house in the seconds before he slammed his gun on the back of her head and Kenna had crumpled to the floor. Thin, jeans cut low so she could see both the woman’s hip bones. Stringy blond hair that hung to her waist and dark circles under her eyes.
Kenna blinked some more, and the room came into focus. A grungy bathroom. She was in the tub, presumably because he’d dumped her in here. She lay with her body at an awkward angle, and her head pressed against broken tiles behind her.
She hissed out a breath. Her jaw hurt, along with everything else.
Javier stood beside the bathtub, dried tears on his face. His hair stuck out in every direction. Kenna reached out and rubbed her thumb over his cheek. “Hey, kid.”
She didn’t even know if he spoke English.
The child whimpered. His bottom lip pouted out, but he said nothing to her.
She didn’t like the overwhelming fear in his eyes. Who knew what he’d been through? The best she could think of was that he’d been ignored and neglected and was simply hungry and in need of a bath so he could sleep and heal. The worst wasn’t something she wanted to think about.
Muted shouting came from the other side of the closed bathroom door. The whole room was barely larger than the bathroom at the hotel she shared with Maizie.
Time to plan.
The last thing she wanted to do was lie here and wallow in her current situation. She would rather let Kart believe he had won, that he’d captured both her and Navarro’s nephew successfully. That Kenna had been subdued enough she wouldn’t be able to fight back even if she wanted to.
But why did he need both of them?
And why go to such lengths at the hospital to do it? She could only think his intention really had been to kill Jax. Maybe he hadn’t been expecting her and she disrupted the plan, so he’d taken her instead. So he’d have her when Elliot showed up.
Playing both ends of his game so he could produce a result either way.
She couldn’t get her thoughts together well enough to figure it out.
Kenna looked around and spotted a washcloth on the edge of the cracked sink. A grimy rag. Close enough to her that she could reach over the toilet and grab it. She wiped the kid’s face, trying to give him some semblance of care even in the middle of this.
The boy clambered over the edge, sliding into the bathtub, and landed on her. Kenna grunted.
He cuddled up to her, his face in her neck. She pretty much melted.
Kids weren’t usually people she had around after she saved them, and she wasn’t always sure what to do or say with them. Not beyond,Do you want to get out of here?andLet’s go. This one let her know what he needed, which was good because she didn’t know enough Spanish to reassure him.
She could dothis.
Kenna switched up her plan to get out of the empty tub in favor of staying where she was, rubbing her hand up and down the little boy’s back. He shuddered and sighed against her.
“Okay.” She kept her voice gentle, hoping he understood the sentiment. “We’re gonna be okay.”
