Page 12 of Now or Never
“We can’t fight them. They’re too big and too dangerous.” She shook her head.
Right then, a boy no more than five years old with tan pants, rubber boots, and a heavy coat trudged along the salted sidewalk. His ears were red, but he held a wool hat in one hand. He stopped in front of the house.
“Isn’t that the residence?” Kenna asked.
Jax let go of her hand. “Yes, it is. You think that’s his house?”
She shook her head. “If he lives there, he doesn’t want to go inside.”
“The man who owns it has been dead longer than that kid has been alive.” Jax shifted in his seat. “But someone lives there. A light is on inside, behind the blinds in the living room.”
“He’s just standing there.” Her heart broke at the sight of this lonely little boy on the sidewalk outside a house that might not be his. Was trepidation holding him there, not wanting to go home? That, or he should move on. Get to his house. If he lived here, what about that house made it so he didn’t want to go to the door and step inside?
A million scenarios all roiled in her mind. One of a thousand ways this little boy could be suffering inside the walls of that house.
“We need to keep talking about how to get out of this stalemate,” Jax said. “So we have a plan for what to do aboutDominatus.”
The front door of the house opened. A slender woman stood there in slim jeans and a thin sweater with long sleeves pulled over her hands.
The little boy saw her and darted toward her, his backpack bouncing side to side as he ran. All the way into her arms. She crouched and held him to her, hugging each other tightly in the doorway.
Kenna sniffed.
“That’s why we have to fight them,” Jax said. “So we can live in suburb with a white picket fence and kids who ride the bus to school and play sports and take music lessons. So we can go to sleep at night and rest and not lay awake wondering when the threat will come. We have to eliminate them so they’re no longer a threat.”
“You sound like Bear.”
“It’s a good plan.”
Kenna shook her head, watching the door to the house close. “A missile isn’t a plan. It’s just a missile. They don’t know where to fire it, or when. What they need is intel.”
Another point of contention.
“So let’s get it for them,” he said. “Isn’t there a way we can find out when the nextDominatusmeeting is? We could pass Miami Security International, or what’s left of them, the coordinates, as well as the date and time of the meeting. Let them take care of the rest.”
Kenna’s eyes burned. “I want that dream of yours, though not so much the suburbs.”
“I thought it wasourdream.”
“If it was, there would be a dog in the mix. Something goofy and lovable.” She turned to him, taking his face in her hands tobring him close to her. “I want that. I do. It just feels like too much of an impossible dream. I have to worry aboutnowevery minute of every day, and I have to worry about the next minute. I can’t even contemplate the day this child is born right now.”
“It’s coming in a few months. We need to find a midwife, and a safe place for you to have the baby.”
Kenna squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I can’t…” She tried to breathe. To think.
“I know.” He held her arms. “I think you should talk to Elizabeth, or someone else. Work through the panic you feel.”
“I need the fear.” She held his gaze with hers. “I need to remember to be afraid every moment. It’s what will keep this baby safe.”
“But you won’t let it stop you from living your life? You’re going to have to fight for that as well.”
She didn’t worry about the flat tone he used to say that. “I’m not hiding. But I’m also not dangling myself out as bait. I’m done playing their game. I do this my way.”
“Do what? Solve cases?”
“No, live my life.”
He drew her to him and kissed her passionately, and all that fear and anxiety and desperation arced between them light lightening. The give and take between them was both solidarity and a battle of wills. She wanted to feel his frustration and powerlessness, because it meant he felt the same as she did contemplating what the future held.
