Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Kenna stood watching out the back window, tapping her foot. It had been hours since the hospital explosion. She still hadn’t talked to Jax or Zeyla. “Come on, Preston.”
What was taking them so long?
Kenna kept tapping her foot. “You’re driving me crazy.”
She glanced over at Maizie, back at her same workstation, working on the flash drive and the port it connected to. Hacking into the drive of whatever Shawn Terrance stole from his employer.
Jax would be back soon. Continue to protect him, Lord.
The danger wasn’t over. She could argue that the danger would never be over. And soon enough, they’d be bringing a child into the world. Another innocent life at risk.
Maizie sat back in the chair, her body still. Hands poised over the keys. “I think… I’m in. I did it.” A wide smile stretched across her face.
So wide it was infectious. “That’s amazing!” She walked over and squeezed the young woman’s shoulder. “You always surprise me with what you can do, but I also don’t know why I’m surprised.”
Maizie glanced at her, and Kenna smiled. She was worried about Jax and Zeyla, but Preston was taking care of them and getting them back here.
“I won’t ask yet what you have on there.” Kenna motioned to the screen with her chin.
“By all means, keep pacing back and forth and tapping your foot.”
Kenna chuckled. “Sorry.” She put her arm around Maizie’s shoulders.
“You love them. I’m worried, too.” Maizie leaned her head toward Kenna, in line with the baby bump. She reached over and patted Kenna’s stomach. “We’ll be all right.”
“Yes, we will.” Because Jax was going to be here.
Maizie said, “In the meantime, it looks like I have all the files. Plenty of them.”
“It’ll take you some time to go through them all. Need some help?”
Elizabeth and Craig Stairns, a retired couple Maizie lived with—meaning her Airstream was on their back lawn—helped a whole lot with work like this.
Reading through papers. Stairns was a retired FBI agent and Kenna’s boss from years ago, and Elizabeth was a counselor who helped them all in more ways than they could count.
“You think Preston will care if we print hundreds of pages?”
Kenna chuckled. “Guess I need to remember how to speed-read.”
“It isn’t like you need to be doing anything else except putting your feet up and reading documents.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She wandered back to the window and watched the horizon, looking for Preston’s helicopter.
She spotted a couple of his security team members patrolling the grounds.
Jax had spoken to them all, but she and Maizie had stuck to the house for the most part.
After the deal with MSI and how their boss turned out to be Dominatus, she wasn’t eager to trust another private security team.
If Preston and Jax were satisfied with their answers enough to trust them, she would as well, but that didn’t mean she needed to make friends.
A black dot emerged over the mountain range in the distance.
“I see them.” She hoped it was them, at least.
“Are you going to be like this every time he goes on an operation?”
“Probably.” Kenna could admit that much. “I have no idea how women whose husbands are deployed in war zones or spouses whose other halves are a cop or firefighter handle it. I’m a mess.”
“You’d probably be less of a mess if he hadn’t been blown up last night.”
Kenna didn’t turn back from the window. “I was a mess as soon as he left.”
Sure, hearing the hospital had exploded didn’t help, but it wasn’t worse than knowing her husband would be alone on that bridge, facing gunmen by himself.
No matter what, all of them were in danger.
Being here was more like allowing herself to be lulled into a false sense of security, versus being actually secure.
With their enemy and the reach Dominatus had, there was literally nowhere they could hide. Even the security and anonymity of this ranch was on a clock. And time was running out.
The black dot grew bigger until she could clearly make out the outline of Preston’s helicopter.
“I was a mess as well. But it was more about whether the fake drive and fake port were going to hold up to scrutiny,” Maizie said. “I figured as soon as they got it, they would test it and realize it was a fake.”
They hadn’t told anyone they were keeping the original and had no intention of handing it over. “Unfortunately, that might be what caused the explosion.”
Kenna pushed open the French doors and stepped out onto the patio, a patchwork of red stones surrounded by planters with all manner of greenery in them.
Ferns and cacti. Preston had told her he requested plants that didn’t take much work for his landscaping staff and that would remain green even in winter.
He was probably only trying to distract her from worrying about Jax on his mission, even with Zeyla there to back him up. It had mostly worked, though she had no intention of ever taking up gardening.
Unless she should?
Maybe it would be a decent distraction for times when Jax was on a mission or stepped into a dangerous situation—or headed to the street to check the mail.
At some point, she might venture out with him, but when there was a baby to protect, neither of them was going to jump at the chance to leave the baby and go out together.
Not even if there was an army back home to protect their daughter.
The helicopter lowered slowly to the ground, and she walked across the lawn toward it. Two armed security guards flanked the aircraft, far enough back that they were keeping watch on the area around her and her family.
She needed to tell them thank you.
Kenna stood with her fingers laced over her baby bump while the rotors created a wind that whipped her hair around.
The helicopter engine shut off, and the rear door opened. Preston stepped down, turning immediately to help Zeyla out. Zeyla had a white bandage on her left temple and one on her right wrist, and she walked with a limp.
Kenna came right over, and they hugged. “Are you okay?”
Zeyla nodded. “I’m good.” She gave Kenna another squeeze and headed toward the house.
Preston helped Jax out of the chopper, and Kenna got a look at her husband. She tried not to wince. He’d been hit by a bullet while wearing a vest just a couple of months ago and had only recently fully healed from that. Now he had a new crop of bumps and bruises, or worse.
His left arm was in a sling, but she didn’t see a bandage. It had to be his collarbone. He’d, of course, refused to run down all his injuries for her and simply stressed that he would be back soon.
Broken ribs. Sprains. Who knew what else.
He had a similar limp to Zeyla and walked with Preston holding his elbow. Jax shrugged him off.
Preston said, “I’ll go get the golf cart, so you don’t have to walk.”
“I can make it. I don’t need a ride.” He looked grumpy.
Kenna wanted to roll her eyes, but that wouldn’t go down well right now. She slid under his nonbandaged arm. “I’m glad you’re fine. You look great.”
He didn’t laugh.
Another man climbed from the helicopter, carrying one of those old medical bags. Preston’s private doctor? She’d heard that he had one before but didn’t want to be paranoid right now that they needed someone on hand.
They set off, walking slowly toward the house while Preston watched them. She wanted to ask Preston what he knew of their injuries, but not with Jax here.
He and his doctor friend walked behind them, talking quietly.
“Are you really all right?” She spoke in a low voice so only Jax would hear her.
“Everything important is in one piece and functioning.”
“That’s the bar we’re measuring things against?” Didn’t seem like a super high bar to her, more like rock bottom, baseline health. Or aliveness. Not even health, because that required something to be optimal.
“The doctor gave me something, but it’s wearing off, and I’m due for another dose in an hour. I just need to lay down so I can hold on until then.” Jax blew out a slow breath as they stepped from the grass onto the stones and headed for the French doors where Maizie stood watching them.
Jax continued, “He has this experimental pain management stuff that isn’t a narcotic. Seems like it works pretty well.”
“That’s great.” She’d rather he didn’t need it in the first place, but that wasn’t the reality of the lives they led and their jobs. “Let’s get you to the couch.”
She and Maizie both helped him up the step into the back porch room, then over to a small couch. Zeyla had slumped into a chair over by Maizie’s workstation, where she now had her head back against the wall and her eyes closed.
Jax lay back with a groan.
Kenna looked over at her sister. “You good, Zeyla?”
“Peachy.” She didn’t open her eyes.
“Maybe Preston can explain to me how a bomb packed in Gabby’s stomach exploded in the hospital, killing her, the doctor, the nurse, and the janitor on the floor above them.
” Kenna folded her arms above her baby bump and resisted the urge to tap her foot.
“Because I’m having trouble assimilating how you were both almost killed. ”
Jax opened one eye. “Zeyla realized it. But we were too late.” He paused to take a breath. “I’m surprised she didn’t explode when she hit the water, to be honest.”
If that had happened, and the device planted in Gabby’s abdominal cavity blew at that point, she would have likely killed Zeyla and the owner of the boat. “I had the same thought.”
Maizie said, “They probably realized the drive was fake and hit the button to blow the bomb.”
Kenna glanced at her, then back at Jax. “But if they went to the trouble of packing it in her stomach, they planned to blow her up, regardless. It was just a question of when that happened.”
The doctor wandered to Zeyla and pulled up a chair to sit in front of her, clicking on a tiny pen light.
Jax said, “They thought they got what they wanted. They were never going to let her go.”
“Who were they?” She’d rather have said it more diplomatically than that, and with a whole lot more patience to find out if he saw their faces and could somehow describe them.
Jax shook his head, which looked like it hurt. “They were wearing masks.” His voice had started to slur. “I didn’t see them.”
He was falling asleep or passing out. “Doctor?”
The older man had black slacks, shined shoes, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal tattoos covering his forearms. He pushed his chair back from Zeyla and came over.
“Sleep is good, but I’ll keep an eye on him.
He has two broken ribs and a bruised collarbone, but no head injury and no internal bleeding. ”
Was that good? In the grand scheme of things, probably. But the next few weeks weren’t going to be fun.
She turned to Preston, who looked up from his phone. “We have the information from Shawn Terrance’s drive.”
“That’s good.”
She nodded. “We still have what we need to prove Shawn was right to blow the whistle on the company he worked for, but with no idea who those guys that kidnapped Gabby were, we don’t know if there’s another group in play. A bigger threat than the company’s team of uptight lawyers.”
After how it went at the police station, talking their way out of theft charges and helping work on the operation…
Of course, they were supposed to have done that as a favor and also given the drive back to the company—which they did not do.
Kenna didn’t figure they were super pleased with her team right now.
“We can give them the original, now that we can make copies of everything.” She turned to Maizie and saw that Zeyla’s eyes were open. “They won’t be able to sweep this under the rug.”
Her sister, usually ready to jump into a fight at any time, looked exhausted.
“We’ll regroup and come up with a plan to hand over the drive, plus also blast the internet with the truth.
” She headed toward Maizie and pulled up a chair beside her.
Not the most comfortable chair in the world, given that it was wicker with a thin cushion, but it was better than standing all day with swollen ankles.
“What do you think, Maizie? It’s your case. ”
The younger woman glanced over from her computer screen, and Kenna saw an odd look on her face.
“What is it?” Kenna asked.
Maizie hesitated. “Another episode of that podcast just dropped. It’s about the Seventh Day Killer.”
A host of memories, most of which had Jax in them. Some with her first love, Bradley, before he died. All of it was mixed together in her mind. Kenna forced them all back and focused on Maizie.
“He’s getting closer to recounting crimes that we all investigated together.” Maybe Maizie was worried about the truth of where she’d come from being discovered.
The younger woman shook her head. “He’s got a special guest on the show. He’s interviewing the Seventh Day Killer’s final victim, the one you saved.”
“Ellayna Feathers?”
Maizie nodded.
“She’s a child!” Kenna nearly exploded out of her chair, remembering that night at the theater when she’d found Ellayna in the basement and had to fight off the killer to save her.
They’d been through so much. Ellayna’s mom emailed Kenna every few months to check in and let her know how the girl was doing. She’d just had her twelfth birthday.
Maizie pointed at the screen. “She’s a guest on his show.”
Kenna gripped the sides of the chair. “I want to listen to it.”