Page 37 of Live a Little!

She jerked awake. Someone was shakingher.

“Time to go,” Jake said, his voice soft but no longer awhisper.

She blinked and stretched as she tried to get her bearings. With a shock, it all came back to her. She gazed around, wondering if she’d just had the strangest nightmare/wet dream combo of her life, but the cold cement and hunger were real, as was Jake urging her to her feet. “I can’t believe I fell asleep,” she grumbled on ayawn.

“Good thing you don’tsnore.”

The card game was obviously over; she couldn’t hear the guards. “Are they gone?” she mumbledsleepily.

“Doing their rounds. Comeon.”

He grabbed her hand and slipped her backpack over his shoulders. They skulked around the crates, past the trucking bays, over to the corner of the warehouse, where a door was set into the wall. Jake kept his back between her and the security panel so she couldn’t see what he was doing, but the next thing she knew, he’d opened the door—and no alarms sounded, no lights flashed. She remembered how easily he’d slipped past her own alarm system the night before, and wasn’t at allsurprised.

If Jake hadn’t been there, she’d have had to spend the entire night at Oceanic, either cowering among the crates with the rats or holed up in that teeny tiny washroom, then somehow pretend to arrive at work the next morning. In yesterday’sclothes.

She shuddered at thethought.

“Boy, am I glad that’sover.”

As they walked out into the chilly night, Cynthia really thought itwasover.

Until she saw thefence.

---