Last Chance Hero. Melinda Di Lorenzo

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       Chapter 3

      Donovan froze, mad at himself. Should’ve been more insistent. More forceful. Gotten her out of here and given ourselves time. A fighting chance. If she gets hurt because you couldn’t keep your heart and hands in check—

      “Dono?”

      At the sound of Jordynn’s voice—colored by clear desperation and completely lacking animosity now—his eyes flicked up. Her gaze was on him, scared but expectant. Needing him.

      Hell.

      “What are we going to do?” she asked.

      Donovan made himself move, made himself look around the room in search of a solution. In search of a viable plan. He was pleased when he found one immediately.

      He stepped away from the barricaded door, and moved to unlock the wide window at the back of the room. With a grunt at the effort, he slid the stiff pane sideways, then knocked out the screen.

      “They’ll never believe we went out that way,” Jordynn said with a frown. “It’s a fifteen-foot drop.”

      “I don’t want them to believe it,” Donovan replied. “I want them to check it out, then assume it’s a diversion tactic and start searching.”

      The line between her eyebrows deepened. “You want them to look for our hiding place?”

      “Yep.” He nodded toward the door. “And we’re going to leave that stuff there and wait for them to come to us, too.”

      Her eyes pinched with worry. “What?”

      “We don’t stand a chance of getting past them. Any second, they’re going finish searching down there. Then they’ll come up, the only way they can. Which is also the only way down. We really can’t beat them.”

      “But...we can’t just let them win.”

      “We won’t. We’re going out the way I came in. Through the bathroom, into the closet, then out through the den.”

      “The den is right beside the bedroom,” she pointed out.

      “I know. But the den door is wide open, and they won’t do more than glance inside. They’ll assume we’re behind the door they can’t get into and they’ll be so distracted with trying to break through it that they won’t notice as we slip out the other one. With any luck, anyway.”

      “Luck?”

      Donovan nodded. “Best we can hope for.”

      “And if they aren’t distracted enough?”

      He met her eyes. “Then you run like hell.”

      “And what do you do?”

      He moved away. Something told him that if he admitted he’d be more than happy to sacrifice himself on her behalf, she wouldn’t be thrilled. Maybe she’d even be upset by it.

      “Donovan?” She said his full name—the way she always had when she really wanted an answer.

      He didn’t respond right away, and Jordynn’s hand landed on his elbow. The touch was electric. A renewed buzz of need and a compulsion to answer her question honestly hit him.

      You never could say no to her, could you?

      He turned to face her again, his mouth open. But the thump of boots on the stairs saved him from having to admit he’d gladly let them take him if it meant she’d go free.

      “Time to go,” he said instead.

      As they moved across the bedroom, the doorknob rattled. Jordynn jumped, and Donovan slipped his hand to hers wordlessly and offered a reassuring squeeze. He expected her to pull away. She didn’t. Instead, she clung tightly to his fingers and let him take the lead. He pulled her to the bathroom, where he slid the curtain shut—not more than another ten-second decoy, probably, but anything might help—and turned out the light before lifting the latch to the sliding door on the other side of the room.

      From outside the bedroom, the rattle of the knob had been switched out for a bang on the door itself, and an accompanying order to open it before they broke it down.

      Jordynn inched closer to Donovan. He knew it was just because she was scared, but that didn’t stop it from feeling good to have her so near.

      “It’s all right,” he murmured as they pushed into the den closet.

      He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. The scant fifteen feet between them and whoever was on the other side of that door could’ve been multiplied by a hundred—a thousand, maybe—and it wouldn’t have been far enough away.

      Donovan closed the door gently behind them, then paused to look down at her in the dark. “You doing okay?”

      “No.”

      He couldn’t help but let out a low chuckle at her honesty. “Fair enough. Let me rephrase the question. Are you ready to give this escape attempt our best shot?”

      She stared back up at him, silent and still.

      “Jordynn?” he prompted.

      “You laughed,” she replied softly.