Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Undisclosed Location, Colorado
Kenna lifted her coffee cup from the saucer it sat in and leaned back in the wicker chair, shifting her weight against the pillow behind her back. She closed her eyes and inhaled, pretending the drink wasn’t decaf.
A loud sigh from across the all-weather patio drew her attention.
She opened her eyes and watched Maizie for a few moments.
The young woman sat at a small round table in a wicker chair of her own, working on her laptop.
She’d plugged the drive into a port on the side and had the flash drive plugged into that.
“Not making any progress?”
Maizie wore checkered pajama pants and an oversized gray sweater with no writing on it. She had secured her hair in a high bun with plenty of bumps and wisps of hair all over. “Not so far.”
They had to raise their voices a little to hear each other across the expanse of the patio, which was surrounded by a half wall.
In summer, there were screens above the wall, but right now, given the winter temperatures outside, fitted clear plastic panels preserved the view but blocked the cold air from outside.
Kenna wouldn’t have minded some cold air.
It was pretty warm in here. “Aren’t you worried they’ll be able to trace you when you access the flash drive?
” After all, it contained information from the company servers, but it might also access their network somehow.
What if those people in the SUVs could trace them as soon as Maizie broke the security features on the flash drive?
Maizie shook her head. “This laptop is air-gapped. It isn’t connected to the internet at all, it doesn’t even have the ability to. So, no one can hack this computer.”
“Maybe that’s why you can’t get into the drive?”
“It isn’t.”
The door behind Kenna opened, and Preston Lightwood stepped out, wearing athletic clothes, with sweat on his forehead. He carried a tall glass filled with a green smoothie.
“Hey.” Kenna figured Maizie wouldn’t mind if she was distracted—so that she quit distracting Maizie.
“Your husband is still going. I tapped out.” Preston blew out a breath. “That kind of workout is not for an old man like me.” He eased into a chair at the table with her.
Kenna chuckled. She wanted to commiserate with the guy that he felt old but was also secretly proud of Jax for pushing them both in a workout. “Any updates from Zeyla?”
Jax would have passed information to Preston for her if there was something she should know.
Preston said, “She hasn’t called in yet this morning.”
“It’s still early. She spent hours following those SUVs after we parted ways, and she didn’t get to sleep until after four this morning.”
Preston sipped from his glass and managed to mostly hide the grimace at the taste of it. “You really hid from bad guys in a car wash?”
Kenna set her cup down and grabbed a hash brown from her plate. “Gotta give it to the car. It found us a decent place to hide.” She took a bite of her potato.
“Of course, it did.” What he didn’t do was remind them all how much it cost him to supply them with that vehicle.
Kenna’s first instinct had been to turn it down when he’d called a month or so back and insisted. But after talking to Jax about it, they both realized it was far safer for them to ride around in a vehicle with armor plating and defensive capabilities.
She wiped her greasy fingers on her napkin.
“We stayed put in the car wash for a few minutes. The car told us to ease around the back of a dry cleaners and slip into the drive-thru for a Vietnamese restaurant. It actually seemed like it knew where the pursuing cars were—like it connected to the local traffic cameras to tell us how to avoid those specific vehicles.”
She didn’t really want to know if it did, because that would be illegal.
But then again, the boundaries of justice, right living, and getting results often blurred in ways that could be conceived as her being an accessory to a crime.
Denial, or avoidance, might not be enough to protect her from the law.
More than likely, one day, it would catch up with her.
Her phone screen flashed, but the cell made no noise and didn’t vibrate.
Kenna leaned over and looked at the screen, then rolled her eyes.
“Another podcast episode just dropped.” She lifted the phone and unlocked it, scrolling to the email she’d received alerting her to the latest episode of True Crime Northwest.
“Anything good?” Preston’s tone was so neutral.
She wanted to throw her phone across the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, Preston glanced up behind Kenna. She heard the door, and Jax said, “Hey. Everything okay?”
She turned far enough to see him coming on her other side and showed him the screen. “New episode. Though, I’d rather talk about how we’re going to take down this software company and finish what Shawn Terrance started.”
She navigated to the text thread she had with Shawn’s sister Gabby, but there were no new messages.
She’d told Gabby Terrance that she would contact her as soon as she had news.
Hopefully, they would soon, because possessing the drive and it being more than a tiny paperweight were two different things.
They needed the information from the storage device.
But pointing that out would just put undue pressure on Maizie, and it was clear from watching the girl that she was all in to solve this puzzle.
“Want me to skim it?” Jax held out his hand.
She slapped her phone into his palm. “I’d love that.”
The low-grade irritation she’d been feeling upon hearing a true crime podcaster recount every case she’d ever worked over the past couple of years wasn’t going to let up until they figured out who he was.
Hopefully, that happened before this guy realized where Maizie had joined their group from, and how she’d been raised.
“He knows entirely too much about you.” Jax thumbed the screen, still reading the transcript, and reached over with his other hand to squeeze her knee.
“Question is, how did he find out?” She glanced at Preston, who was finishing his smoothie. Jax probably needed a plate of food after his grueling workout. She shifted in her seat, uncovered a couple of the platters the housekeeper had prepared, and dished food onto Jax’s plate.
Preston set his empty glass on the table and reached for the carafe with regular coffee. “Maybe someone gave him all the information. I mean, it isn’t readily available like in police reports. There’s no log of all the cases you’ve ever worked.”
She’d been wondering about that. “Unless someone tracked my movements for years, watched what I was doing and kept that log for me.”
“You think it was Dominatus?” Preston stabbed a single sausage with his fork and ate just that to accompany his morning coffee.
Kenna shrugged. “Who else knows more about us than we do? The only other option that makes sense is that the president wants all the information out there for some reason. I don’t know why she’d feel the need to undermine me by telling everyone everything about what I’ve done, unless it’s to toot her own horn and take the credit…
” She decided she wasn’t making sense and just sighed.
Jax squeezed her knee again. “Okay, here’s the highlights.
You took a cold case, missing girl from Ogden.
There was no reason to believe she was still alive.
Pretty sure the police had given up hope, but the family still wanted answers.
They gave your number a try, a referral from someone else you’d helped. ”
Kenna nodded. “That’s how I found cases for a long time. Just word of mouth.”
“You tracked the guy from Ogden, where he’d taken her, and managed to find him in Montana. You left him on a bench for the police to find, handcuffed with a box of all the evidence next to him.”
She remembered that. “He wasn’t happy. But neither was anyone else, considering the little girl he took was long dead and buried. I left the information in the box because he told me where he’d left her. The police dug her up so the family could bury her.”
Kenna placed a protective hand over her pregnant belly. Everyone would know why, and they’d all be so sympathetic to the plight of motherhood. Wanting so badly to keep this new life safe, being responsible for a tiny thing. Protecting her every day of her life.
The dread was the worst part. And the dreams.
Every day was one day closer to the reality of being responsible for a baby.
She wasn’t so much worried about feeding, changing, and sleep schedules, though she’d been doing plenty of research into those things.
Kenna was way more worried about their enemy finding her with the baby and using the child as a pawn.
They would know she’d do anything to protect her family.
Which made her love a weapon they could wield to get whatever they wanted.
Jax covered her hand with his. “He mentioned a witness you never managed to track down, who originally provided the police with testimony about a car used by the kidnapper.”
She couldn’t remember specifics but did recall visiting an older woman. “The cops had the make and model of the car and a partial license plate. It was a matter of legwork at that point, and unlike them, I had no other cases and as much time as it took.”
She’d also had the freedom to go outside her jurisdiction, unlike the police, who had to coordinate with other law enforcement departments and agencies.
Kenna continued, “I remember talking to an older woman. She had sold her car to the killer, or at least she gave me a description of the guy who bought it. That part didn’t ever totally make sense.”
“Because she told you he had a scar above his eyebrow?” Jax asked.
Kenna nodded. “It was a private sale; he gave her cash. Years later, she got a ticket and realized the car was still registered to her. She was trying to get it out of her name.”
Preston said, “You tracked the car? Is that how you caught him?”
“I found the vehicle in a junkyard just outside Bozeman. Not far from where he got the parking ticket, actually.”
“And it led you to him?”
Kenna shrugged. “In a roundabout way, through a whole lot more legwork. Talking to the junkyard owner and his nephew, going person to person, trying to find out who they’d spoken to and where he went.
Eventually, I found a cabin he’d been renting and staked out the place.
I followed him for a few days and realized he was gearing up to take another girl. ”
Preston hissed out a breath.
“I hit the cabin in the middle of the night before he could,” she said. “I wasn’t about to let him anywhere near another little girl after what he did to the others.”
“There were more?” Jax asked.
There was something in his expression she wanted to ask about. A lingering question—and she might not like the answer.
“Yes.” She shifted in the chair and faced him a little more. “You should eat. But also tell me what you’re thinking.”
He gave her a small smile and picked up his knife and fork. “The scar.”
“It delayed me for a while. I’ll admit that it didn’t help to have contradicting descriptions of the guy.”
He finished chewing, then asked, “Did you consider an accomplice or partner?”
“More likely just someone else he paid to buy the car. Other than that one occasion, he was never seen by anyone I spoke to.” She frowned. “You think there were two of them?”
“It’s not about what I think.”
“Fine, then you don’t want to dig up the case file and take another look through everything.”
Jax started. “I didn’t say that.”
She smirked. “I’m not going to be offended if you figure out that I missed someone. I got a very bad guy off the streets.”
“Sure?” Jax didn’t seem convinced.
“I’ll be annoyed and complain loudly if you want me to.”
Jax leaned over and gave her a quick kiss that tasted like egg and ketchup. “Maybe I just need a puzzle to solve.”
A puzzle that meant she’d missed something. “I got that little girl’s killer.”
“I know.” He nodded. “I’m just going to confirm there isn’t another bad guy out there, connected to him, who might also be worth finding.”
She didn’t like the idea of a loose end. “I’ll help.”
“It would be good for you to walk me through your steps.”
“You already read it all in that blog transcript of the podcast.” She let a little of how she felt bleed through in her tone.
Jax smiled around his fork.
“Why isn’t Zeyla awake yet?” she asked aloud, not to anyone in particular. “And we have Shawn’s sister to consider. Should I update her? Maybe she’s worrying about if we made any progress.”
Jax glanced over. “Did you read your Bible yet today?”
Kenna let out a long sigh. “I should go for a walk or something.”
The view through the windows stretched left to right in a panorama and out to the mountains.
The world as far as she could see was nothing but landscape, wildlife, and peace.
She could listen to the Bible on her phone and center her heart and mind in Christ. Hopefully, then, the residue of fear from her nightmare would dissipate.
She needed to cling to the Lord, or she wouldn’t survive—if only mentally. Her peace of mind felt brittle and ready to shatter.
“I’ll get you a radio.” Preston started to shift his chair back from the table. “Do you want to take one of the dogs with you?”
He had three dogs on the property, two of which were trained protection dogs. The other followed suit and thought he was one of the team. Watching the Airedale bound after the two short-haired German shepherds was amusing, but she tried not to laugh at his eagerness coupled with their intensity.
“I’ll go with you.” Jax shoved another bite of food in his mouth, picking up the pace of his eating.
Kenna said, “Looks like we’re on the move. You good here, Maze?”
“What?” The young woman looked over and saw them all start to get up from the table. “Oh, I’m good. Whatever.” She waved a hand, refocusing on her work.
Kenna pushed her chair in, and her phone, still on the table, flashed to life with a notification. A new message.
She unlocked the device with her thumb and tapped the notification. Her heart sank at the image on the screen. A terrified woman, bound and gagged. Hair in her eyes. Blood under her nose.
Gabby Terrance stared at the camera.
A message popped up.
Give us the drive or she dies.