Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Kenna didn’t like the silence that greeted her statement. “So…how are we going to narrow down the list of soldiers?”
Neither of them responded to her question.
She looked at Jax. “What?”
“Being cynical keeps you alive?” Jax pulled up to a stop light and looked at her.
“I always think everything is a trap.”
Maizie’s voice came through the car speakers. “Are you really quoting The Princess Bride to us?”
“It’s a great movie,” Kenna said.
She’d watched a lot of them with Jax the first few weeks after he rescued her.
They’d gone through so many classics, nostalgic favorites that weren’t as good as they remembered, and timeless cult hits.
New movies, old movies, and none of them depressing or scary.
It hadn’t entirely worked to pull either of them out of their funk.
But it had helped her at least not think about the ever-present threat for a while.
Or how impossible it was going to be to take down Dominatus.
Kenna had no intention of getting into a conversation about what was going on in her head. They thought they wanted to know, but they’d regret asking in the end. It was better to just…
She blew out a breath. “Can we focus?”
“I’m trying to narrow the list down,” Maizie said. “But I don’t even know whether to rule out people who are dead or keep them on the list.”
“Hmm. Good point.” She took a moment to admire Jax pulling away from the stop light. Why did that stir up attraction in her? Aside from pregnancy hormones, that was.
They’d spent every moment of the day together for a few months now, soaking up the togetherness that had been denied them for the weeks she’d been captive. Probably it would wear off eventually, but she almost didn’t want it to.
Jax said, “If the killer is dead, there won’t be a way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re responsible. There was no DNA on the body from her assailant.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Kenna paused. “What if she was killed, then undressed, and they washed the body completely clean? Which was why there was no evidence and the only blood was transferred from her clothes. They re-dressed her and dumped her in the alley.”
“They?” Jax looked over at her.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Figuratively speaking. One person—the killer. It could have been more than one, though. Or someone else helped him cover it up.”
“Assuming it was even a male who committed the crime,” Maizie pointed out. “Though from the angle of the stab wound that killed her and the depth, it was definitely a bigger and stronger person, most likely a male.”
“A male with military training,” Kenna added.
She could see Samantha being strangled if it was the heat of the moment.
Or beaten, or a messy stabbing. But that wasn’t what had happened.
There was far too much about this that seemed cold and calculated in a way that crimes of passion never were. “Possibly more than one person.”
“I’ll start looking into the people I have on this list, alive and dead,” Maizie said.
“Zeyla has a contact at the Department of Defense, apparently. She said she can dig up their actual personnel files and find out if any of them had a violent streak they couldn’t control in a way it was being put to good use as part of their normal duties. ”
That sounded like the result of a conversation between Maizie, Ramon, and Zeyla about violence and military personnel.
Kenna was of the opinion that anyone could commit violence if they were pushed to the edge and felt they had no other choice.
Some people were more comfortable with it, for whatever nature-or-nurture reason life handed them, or could be trained to the point they were.
All Kenna cared about was what kind their killer was. And, if he was alive, where to find him so they could turn him and the evidence over to the police.
“Sounds good,” Jax said. “Anything else?”
“I was looking into those other missing persons Kenna sent me, trying to find a connection between any of them and Samantha Ambrose.”
This sounded interesting. “Anything?”
“Not without the military angle,” Maizie said.
“Other than that, there’s no connection between her and Samantha.
” She went quiet for a second. “Her name is Megan Tiller. Seventeen, so two years older than our victim. She had a boyfriend six years older who was in the army. Around the time of Samantha’s death, Megan went missing as well.
Her mom is the only parent in the picture, and she doesn’t seem to care much.
There’s nothing on her socials about her daughter being missing all these years.
The police report is closed, and it’s noted that she dropped out of school a few weeks before and told her mom she was going to California with the boyfriend. ”
Kenna straightened in her seat. “The boyfriend? That’s the military connection between this Megan and Samantha?”
Before Maizie could answer, Jax said, “Sounds like it’s only a thread of a connection between the manner of Samantha’s death and the boyfriend. The fact that another young woman went missing shortly after she did...”
“Could be an overlap.” Kenna had seen it in another case, a serial killer who disposed of one victim and all too soon claimed another, sometimes before the previous victim was even killed. “Samantha was dead, so he took Megan.”
But if the boyfriend was responsible, why would he do that? It could be that Megan found out what happened to the other young woman. Or they might not be connected at all.
“Megan has never shown up,” Maizie said. “Not so far as we can figure. Although, it is possible she’s a Jane Doe who was never identified.”
“What about the boyfriend? Is he on the list you came up with?”
“Yes,” Maizie said. “But he’s dead. There’s no one to question. Mitch Caudelle was deployed to Afghanistan a month after Samantha’s death and died a few weeks before he was supposed to come home.”
“Keep digging. This is the best lead we’ve had so far.”
“Got it.”
Jax reached for the dash screen. “Catch you later, kiddo.” He ended the call with a stab of his finger and didn’t waste any time saying, “Those who don’t fall in line…”
“I’m not finishing it.”
“You know what it means.”
Kenna laced her hands on her lap, biting her lip.
“If this case connects to Dominatus, that is significant.”
“Sometimes it seems like everything in my life does,” Kenna muttered.
She squeezed her fingers together hard enough that her forearms twinged with something that wasn’t quite pain.
Just the mild discomfort of a pulling sensation.
For years, the tendons in her forearms that had been severed and repaired by surgeons were a source of intense pain.
Then along came their enemy, trying to do her a favor.
Now she invited the familiar pull that used to be pain where they’d repaired her forearms because it meant she was still who she’d been before they came into her life.
“I’m not ignoring it,” she added. “Or burying my head in the sand.”
Jax pulled over into the parking lot of a high-end grocery store she knew had a sushi counter. “You’re pretending…” He shook his head. “I wanna say you’re pretending they aren’t a threat, but I know that isn’t true.”
“I’m not in denial, and I’m not refusing to see the truth.”
“You wanted to get back to work, but you don’t want to take any cases that have anything to do with them.”
“Exactly.”
Jax glanced at her. “How is that not denial?”
“They don’t get to define everything about me. They’ve taken enough from us—and from our lives.”
“We have to stop them.”
She shook her head. “That’s not a fight I want this child born into.
” She laid her hands on her baby. Their baby.
“They don’t get to control any more of my life.
It’s time I decide for myself what I want to do every day, and it’s not going to be reacting to the last horrible thing we learned they’re doing.
I’m done getting knocked back and trying to strike at them in response. ”
He didn’t reach for her.
Hot tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t right now.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“Neither do you, so don’t start with that either.
” Everyone knew angry tears were better than sad ones.
“None of this happened because of a failure on your part.” She shook her head because it was as ridiculous now as it had been the first time he’d voiced the idea aloud.
She’d have laughed at his suggestion of culpability, but there wasn’t anything funny about any of this.
“Let’s just work this case, then go home to Wyoming. ”
“Knowing they’re still out there?”
“I’ve taken down so many of their players. You’ve taken out a handful yourself. Doing that almost cost us everyone we love.”
“It’s always a risk.”
“I’m supposed to accept it, and the cost, and just to do the right thing?
” She shook her head, one of those hot tears rolling down her cheek.
Regaining her sense of who she was helped her feel more like herself than she had in a long time, and taking a stand felt more Kenna than anything.
Even if the stand she took was to do nothing that had anything to do with them.
“I’m not willing to lose anyone. Not now, and not ever. ”
“That’s what keeps me up at night, praying in the wee hours of the morning.” He cleared his throat. “Trying to figure out how we can get on with our lives knowing they’re out there.”
“It’s easy. We’re already doing it.”
“I thought we were being called to take them down,” he said, carefully. “Before you were captured, that was our ultimate goal. Then I got a taste of exactly what you’re talking about, wondering every minute of every day if you’d been killed or if I would ever find you.”
“You did.” She shifted in the seat and put her knee up, so she could face him. “It wasn’t anyone else who showed up on a speedboat to rescue me from that buoy. It was you.” She reached for him, and he met her halfway.
His forehead settled on her shoulder and he wrapped one arm around her back. He needed to cling to her, and she knew exactly what it felt like to be in that place where there was such a powerful need to hang on. Because she lived there.
Kenna held tight to her husband while he did the same with her.
So much between them went without saying, but it was possible she should have said more the past few weeks than she had.
Keeping her own counsel was necessary for her sanity, and for the sake of all of them, but she could give him something. “I need to feel like me.” Her voice sounded like gravel in the dark interior of the car. “Not like a pawn in their game.”
“I know.” He didn’t move, and she felt his breath brush against her neck. He pressed a kiss to her pulse. “Nothing about my life right now is what I thought it was supposed to be. It’s all a new kind of normal. But I’m not necessarily saying I want to change anything.”
He lifted his head then, and she nodded because she knew. He’d have told her if he wanted to do something different.
“But Kenna…I’m not dealing with what you’re dealing with. I don’t know what you know.”
“We’re on the same team. We both want our child born in safety.”
“It seems like that might be wishful thinking.” Again with the gentle tone. “We know what they do. Eventually they’ll come after us. They’ll come after her.”
She stared at his hard-to-read expression and tried to find the words to explain what was wrong about that statement.
But the words wouldn’t come.