Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Salt Lake City, Utah
Kenna woke slowly, aware of the weight of her husband’s arm over her hip. Protecting her and the baby, even in his sleep. There was no way to extricate herself without him waking up, so she rolled toward him instead and found him blinking awake.
“Don’t get up. You came in late.” She kissed his forehead.
“Text.”
“I’ll look.” She kissed his nose, then his lips, and left him in bed. She sat up and found her slippers on the floor by the bed where she’d left them. After grabbing her phone off the charger, she took a sweater from the hook in her thin closet and slipped it over her shoulders.
She slid open the dividing door between their bedroom and the rest of the RV and saw Zeyla asleep in the recliner chair between the dinette table and the driver’s seat. A blanket over her legs, her shoes still on and sticking out the end.
Above the front seats, she could see Maizie’s loft bed, the size of a double mattress. Not even enough room for her to sit up with clearance over her head. The cat was up there with her, lazily sleeping. Maizie lay on her front with her elbows over a pillow, working on her computer.
She looked at Kenna, who gave her a small wave. Maizie smiled back.
Kenna pressed the button on the electric kettle, so she could make a warm drink, and checked her messages. The most recent was from Jax just after two thirty in the morning.
The suspect ID’d a kidnapper as one of the MSI guys. Can’t believe it, but I think they’re also our shooters in the black SUVs. First thing: we need to get Bear on the phone and get answers.
She’d gone to sleep not able to rest, knowing he was out with Ryson and the FBI rounding up a suspect they believed was the person who took Ellayna and her family.
Then, she’d woken up. So, apparently, she had been able to rest. Or, at least, her body decided she was done for the day, and she fell asleep instead of waiting up for him to get home.
She hadn’t even woken up when he got in.
The guy needed to sleep in this morning. Thankfully, making some calls didn’t put her life in danger.
Kenna called Ramon first since she’d sent him to infiltrate Bear’s team. When he didn’t answer, she hung up without leaving a voicemail. If he’d been captured by someone, she didn’t need to be in his messages giving away information. He had to be able to sell whatever story would keep him alive.
That thought made her stop and say a prayer for him.
After that, she poured her drink and took her seat in the front passenger’s chair, still in its rotated-around position.
Her feet ended up not that far from Zeyla’s.
She read her Bible before she kicked the other woman’s shoe and got her to start waking up.
After all, Kenna intended to grill Bear.
With her morning started right, and Ramon covered in prayer, she said another and dialed Bear’s number.
“Kenna?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She tried to keep her voice down a little and noticed Zeyla had her eyes open now. “I’m actually surprised you answered. I have a question.”
“Is it about Ramon?”
He could tell her anything he wanted to say, but Kenna wasn’t going to take it at face value at this point. “Any idea if he’s all right?”
“You mean was his mission to infiltrate my team successful? You could say that. He’s been pretty helpful.”
“Great.” Kenna tried not to sound sarcastic. “If you don’t need him, you could always cut him loose.”
“Did you have that baby yet?”
She ignored his question. “That isn’t what I want to talk to you about. Listen, you know I respect you guys. I’m usually all in on whatever you’re doing, even if it isn’t how I’d go about solving a problem. But this time, I think you guys might have gone too far.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We have an eyewitness who identified one of your guys as a kidnapper. A twelve-year-old, her mother, and her two-year-old brother. Want to tell me what that’s about?”
Bear said, “Someone saw them?”
“Yeah, I’d be pretty unhappy as well if someone on my team was so sloppy.” Never mind that they’d committed a crime. They’d also given Ellayna access to a phone so she could call Kenna that one time, keeping her on the search, but not in the past few days. What was going on?
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’d love to hear an explanation, Bear. A family is missing, and you’re the only lead we have to the perpetrators.”
“Stress isn’t good for the baby.”
“And working a case is?”
Zeyla got up, shoving aside the blanket and going to the coffeepot. She checked under the lid, then hit the button.
“Where are they?” Kenna gripped the phone when she’d rather throw it across the RV. But that would wake up Jax.
Zeyla downed a tall glass of water, ducked her head into the fridge, and came out with a banana.
Bear said, “I think it’s your job to find them, isn’t it?”
“You sent your people to shoot at my family, and you think you can just distract me? I know you’re behind this. Tell me where you are, and we can meet up. Hash this out.” She knew Bear well enough to be certain that something else was going on.
She just had no idea what it was.
“I’m nowhere near you and too busy to make the trip.”
“Whoever is here, tell them I want a face-to-face. I expect answers and cooperation.” Otherwise, she was well within her rights to tell law enforcement who they were and how to find them.
The MSI operatives here in Salt Lake City would be the subject of a manhunt by police and FBI agents looking for kidnapped victims. There was nowhere they could hide without some serious help.
It made her think of the president and the disastrous call that had been. So what if she was busy? Yeah, she was the president. Why would she not be busy? But this was life or death for that family, and some things were more important than politics.
Actually, there were plenty of things that were more important than politics.
It’s too early for this.
“Tell your people here that I want to talk.”
Bear said, “Just follow the leads you have and find that family, Kenna.” He hung up.
Kenna rolled her eyes and dropped the phone in her lap. “Well, that was pointless.”
Zeyla looked over, in the middle of pouring her coffee. “You thought he’d just admit they’re behind the kidnapping?”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“Me either,” Maizie called out softly from above Kenna. “But I have something you probably want to see.”
Kenna shifted to the edge of the chair. Zeyla came over with her hand out. Kenna clasped her forearm, and Zeyla helped her stand. “Thanks.”
Zeyla saluted her with coffee. “I’ll put the oven on and start the bacon.”
“Don’t smoke out the RV like last time.”
Zeyla grinned. “I’m happy to make breakfast, but you have to accept the consequences.”
Kenna turned away and reached up to grab the ledge by Maizie. There was a ladder, but she tucked it up there with her overnight so it wasn’t in the way.
Maizie leaned over and looked down at her. “Just don’t start doing chin-ups. Everyone already thinks you’re a superhero. You have nothing to prove.”
“I could if I wanted to.”
Zeyla said, “I highly doubt that.”
Kenna frowned at her. “Shh.”
Zeyla snorted, hitting the button to ignite the oven. Kenna heard the gas whoosh to life. “Crack the window, at least.” When she turned back to Maizie, she said, “What did you find?”
“I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about what you said.
You know, about the Dominatus software that lets them fake a voice call.
It’s probably a whole lot easier on the phone than it is with a video because you don’t have to worry about lag.
You just type in the response, and the computer sends it in the person’s voice. ”
Kenna bit her lip. “I really didn’t want to believe the phone call was faked and I wasn’t really talking to Ellayna. I don’t know if it would be better or worse for me to be right. They’d still be gone.”
“And they would likely be with people we would’ve said we trusted,” Zeyla pointed out.
“I still don’t have enough information to let it go.” She asked Maizie, “Do you have a strong reason to believe the call was faked?”
Just the question left an odd taste in her mouth.
It certainly did sound like this was some kind of test. If MSI really was working with Dominatus? She didn’t even know what she was going to do. Ramon had been fed to the wolves. Ellayna and her family were caught in the cross fire.
Maizie shifted her laptop far enough to the edge that Kenna could see it and bent the screen forward. “Look at the audio.”
On the black screen were two thin horizontal white lines. Between them was a red scribble of waveforms.
Maizie said, “This is her talking, leaving you that voicemail. I stripped out only her voice, and there’s nothing else.”
“Like the mic just picked up her voice really well with no outside background noise.”
“That’s basically impossible. At the least, it would pick up the air moving when she breathed. But she said her brother was there, right? How was he totally silent while she was leaving this frantic message?”
Zeyla said, “Maybe he was asleep.”
Kenna frowned. “It’s hard to believe it was literally silent wherever she was.”
“Seems more like the recording was made in a soundproof booth of some kind. That’s the only explanation for why there are no background sounds. No noise. Nothing ambient.”
“Or someone worked on the recording after and stripped it out.”
“I’d have to record a call live to be able to analyze that, but it’s possible they recorded the message and then sent it to your voicemail.” Maizie scrunched up her nose. “But how did they do the phone call? That was live. You’d have noticed an odd delay.”
“There wasn’t one.” Kenna lowered her arms before her hands went numb.
“Maybe they used the voicemail to create a baseline to then fake the call. But why do any of this? They were taken, and we know it’s MSI who is behind it.
They’re the ones harassing us.” She flinched.
“Are they the ones who killed Gabby? Because that’s insane. ”
“Same SUVs, right? That’s what Jax said.” Zeyla lifted the butter knife she was holding and stuck it in her mouth to lick off whatever was on it. Looked like sauce she’d been spreading on white bread.
“The same kind. There are a lot of SUVs in the world.”
Zeyla frowned. “Would they really give us the runaround like that? For all we know, they killed Shawn Terrance and wanted that information so badly they killed Gabby, too. Are they so far gone and so desperate for the tech from that software company that they went to this extent?”
“They either wanted it badly for themselves, or they knew they had to get it off the market so no one had access to it,” Maizie said. “Either way, it doesn’t look good.”
Kenna blew out a breath. “They’ve got a whole lot to answer for. I say we press the issue. Force them to confront us with what’s really going on.”
There had to be a way to call them out that they couldn’t deny.
“That could backfire.” Zeyla set a hand on her hip. “Unless we have a good plan.”
Kenna said, “Then I guess we need to come up with one.”
“Good thing I’m making bacon.”