“My boss? You mean our boss? Last I heard, you were making as much as me.”

“But I’m the one doing all the work. I came to Alaska and scouted out this place, put in a toilet and a bed and nabbed her. What have you done?”

“I’m the one who figured out how to get her to leave the prison alone so you could nab her. I’ve also fronted the money for everything until we can get paid, and now I’m tapped out and your sister is nagging the hell out of me because we can’t make our house payment.”

“Yeah, well, Bridget has never been easy to deal with. I warned you about that when I introduced you.”

“I was in prison! When you’re doing time, a great set of tits trumps a bad temper any day of the week. Anyway, we’ll both be better off when this is all over.”

“I hope so, because I’m telling you, if the doc in the box goes into labor, I won’t have a clue what to do. And I’m not going to be responsible for the death of a baby. So your man just better get his ass up here and fast.”

“You know he can’t come right now!”

“Why not?”

“I told you in the beginning it would be a week or longer.”

“But you didn’t tell me I was kidnapping a pregnant woman! That changes things.”

“Look, he’s going to pay you extra. He’s sorry for not mentioning the pregnancy, but he didn’t know himself.”

Somehow that mollified Emmett, made him feel less set up. “How much extra?”

“Two grand. That’s a lot of money.”

“It is, but he should’ve done his homework. Then he wouldn’t have had to sweeten the pot.”

“She’s nearly forty, and she’s never had kids. How was he supposed to know she’d start now?”

“Okay, fine.” He toed off a piece of linoleum, making the hole that was already there that much bigger. “So when can he get here? How much longer do I have to sweat this out?”

“It’ll be a few days.”

“Why doesn’t he jump on the first flight?”

“Because he’s tied up! You’ll be fine until he gets there.”

He rubbed his forehead with his middle fingers, trying to decide if he should bail out. He wasn’t an expert on pregnancy, but he did know that a woman didn’t have to be due in order to go into labor. His mother had delivered him early, hadn’t she?

And she hadn’t survived the experience.…

Still, he’d come this far. If the lack of intel was truly an honest mistake, he figured he might as well see it through. “I’ll give him until Friday. That’s two days. If he’s not here by midnight, I’m turning her loose and taking off.”

“Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute. Don’t do that. Just sit tight. You can’t screw this up. If you do, neither one of us will get paid and Bridget will leave me.”