Page 112 of Every Which Way

She came awake, at least in part.

Warm.

Floating.

A man stood over the bed, a woman on the other side. Kenna didn’t like hospitals—if that’s what this was. She couldn’t form the words to ask. Couldn’t do anything but lie there on the cusp of moving, or speaking, but unable to do either.

Before she was sucked under again.

ChapterTwenty-Nine

The next time Kenna awoke, she was lying on a couch in a small office that wasn’t a rich man’s study, more like government chic. She could hear someone crying softly. It wasn’t her.

She blinked and started to sit up.

A woman gasped. “Kenna! Don’t try to move too fast.”

She found the woman’s face. “Laney.” Kenna brushed back the hair that had fallen over her face and let out a groan, lying back against the pillow. This couch was hard and uncomfortable. “What happened?”

Before the drugs, she hadn’t been with Jax’s sister. His mom was here as well, on a chair beside the couch.

Laney crouched by Kenna’s hip. “Stay where you are. I can explain but…they’re watching.”

“Talk fast.” None of this made any sense.

Kenna reached out a hand and gently touched the collar on Laney’s neck. The one with explosives in it that, if activated, would blow her head off and kill her instantly. “Laney.” She groaned the word, then touched her own collar. Nothing. “Why don’t I have one? You’re both wearing them.”

Adrielle looked away, a balled-up tissue in her hand. Anger was far better than sadness in whatever situation this was.

She sat up, a huge skirt moving with her as she lowered her legs to the floor. She was wearing… “Why am I in my wedding dress?”

Laney backed up and sat on the coffee table. Whoever owned this office, they might work for the government, but they were high up. Like a senator. “We have only been here half an hour, so we don’t know much. They made us put you in that, by the way. We didn’t want the senator’s men doing it.” She motioned to Kenna’s middle.

Adrielle didn’t look at them. Her body language screamed that she was on the precipice of losing all control.

Kenna gritted her teeth and shifted back on the couch. “Why do I ache all over?”

Laney shook her head. “They put these collars on us. They’re explosive devices…”

Kenna was already nodding. “I saw my mom at the senator’s house. They’d put one on her. This is about getting organs for his uncle. He’s sick.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat, hardly able to process it. “Zeyla.”

She’d never even met her sister and had only seen her in person once.

Kenna didn’t want to lose that shot at a sibling. But right now, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Okay, time to quit ignoring the obvious. “He took my dress from Akira and put me in it because I’m supposed to marry him?”

Laney bit her lip.

Adrielle said, “If you don’t, we all die. But we’re probably dead either way. Once he has no need for us?—”

“Mom.”

Kenna glanced between the two women. “My friends will find us. Or we’ll figure a way out of this.” He’d had the collars’ key in his pocket before. Or perhaps he had some kind of remote detonator, maybe on his phone. “We just need a plan.”

She patted her lap.Lord…

All of it went unspoken, but He knew.

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