Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“Did you just break and enter into a building?” Kenna smirked at her husband, when in reality it was kind of hot.
“What is that look?” He eyed her. “Because your FBI agent husband is now a criminal. Am I some kind of dangerous bad boy now?”
She shrugged, trying to keep from laughing. “You’re a pretty good distraction.”
Better than thinking about everything that was going on. Whether she might be in danger, who in their sphere needed help or someone to get justice for them.
He leaned over and kissed her, then pushed the door open and went into the building where the think tank had operated. “For the record, that was barely a lock. It took almost nothing to get it to open. Which tracks with the idea that they cleared out and there’s nothing to find.”
He was right. The entrance to the building was empty. An elevator in the center of the far wall beside the stairs, no one behind the desk. Nothing on the desk and not even a chair for someone to sit on.
“Stairs?” she asked.
Jax took her hand. “From the information in the packet, they were housed on the second floor.”
“So what was the top floor? And what kind of work were they doing here?”
He stopped at the directory at the bottom of the stairs, screwed to the wall. “Third floor is an accountant’s office.”
The first floor was listed as a property management company, and the floor the lawyers had been hired to work on read “The Denari Foundation.” Whatever that was.
She dialed Maizie’s number and put an earbud in her ear. When the young woman picked up, Kenna said, “How’s things?”
“We were told we can stand down. They’re working on the fire, and hopefully we won’t have to evacuate.”
“That’s good.”
“The air is thick outside, and hazy. Everything smells like a giant bonfire.”
“Yep.” Kenna had been around wildfires before, but usually in California in July and August. Not this late in the year in Colorado.
Even if a dry season, a warm start to the winter season, and a lightning storm were to blame, she still had a hard time believing it wasn’t coincidental. “Can I ask about the packet?”
“Sure.”
“Anything in there about the Denari Foundation?”
“Isn’t that from the Bible?” Maizie asked.
Kenna squeezed Jax’s hand. “Is Denari from the Bible?”
He glanced at her as they rounded the first landing and headed up to the second floor. “It’s currency. The unit of money they used in the Gospels. It might be Roman, but I’d have to look that up.”
“It’s—”
Maizie said, “I can hear him.”
“Okay. Whether it’s a good name for a front company, a shell corporation, or some other kind of money laundering thing wrapped up in a charity or not…I have no idea.” Kenna let Jax go through the door to the second floor first, hanging back while he made sure it was safe.
She laid a hand on her baby bump, trying to reassure herself they’d be fine.
If the ghost was coming after her, there were a lot of people he would have to get through before he touched her.
Plenty of protection here to keep her from having to worry about facing danger. But she was going to worry anyway.
She asked Maizie, “Have you heard from Ramon and Zeyla?”
“They were working something until late last night, tracking his movements after visiting Megan Tiller in the hospital. Now that they know you might be on his list, they’re on the way to you. Probably stopped to get some sleep.”
“Okay.” That was reassuring enough she could relax for a moment.
Jax held the door. “Not much more in here than there was downstairs.”
Kenna stepped into the open plan office space. “Hardly surprising. I mean, if they were hired to be some kind of think tank and come up with a scenario about whatever this is, then no one is going to want to leave evidence behind.”
“You think the scenario was about bombing the Croatian president?” Jax surveyed the room.
Kenna didn’t see anyone moving around. They were alone.
There were a few desks separated by cubicles, a conference table at the far end by the window, and a printer in the opposite corner.
She nodded, still thinking on it. “It’s absolutely possible they were hired to come up with the scenario.
Given the FBI’s evidence, they were probably scouting the location of the best place to set off a bomb in good faith, thinking they were working for the right side.
Instead, their research was used to implicate them. ”
“They were framed,” Maizie said.
“Exactly.”
Jax glanced over.
“We know they worked more than one scenario, though.” Kenna paused. “So, what else did they come up with, and is that going to be used against them as well? Or against someone else.”
“They’re supposed to be part of the resistance,” Jax said. “How did they end up getting duped so thoroughly? That’s what I want to know.”
Maizie responded, “Me too.”
Kenna said, “We’re all in agreement about that.”
Jax walked through the room, stepping on the papers scattered about. “Let’s see what we can see here. If there’s anything to learn.”
She went with him, mostly just for the sake of not being alone and unprotected.
Through the open phone line she heard, “Oh.”
“What is it, Maze?”
“The file you uploaded in the car that the President gave you. The dead guy you’re supposed to avenge, or whatever.”
“Is he in the packet?”
“Yes.” Maizie went quiet instead of elaborating.
Kenna pictured her with that crease between her eyebrows, scanning information at hyper-speed the way she did.
Not many people in the world could process information like that.
Maizie often saw connections no one else did, and it would make her an amazing investigator one day.
Not that Kenna had told her as much. She wanted the young woman to find her own path, knowing there were so many careers that would be a lot less dangerous than police work.
Her skills would be an asset to so many different fields.
Finally, Maizie said, “Elizbeth and Craig said the personnel records weren’t real people, but this guy is a real person. So the image isn’t AI even if the rest of the information on him reads more like a fictional dossier.”
“What about the others whose photos you have?”
“That’s the problem. We didn’t find this guy that the president’s file says is Steven Braughton because he doesn’t have a driver’s license that we can find.
Or if he does, it’s not one anyone can just look up.
Maybe it’s Top Secret. Like someone found it necessary to hide his identity, or this is his real name and his driver’s license will come up as someone else.
So maybe they are all real people, and we just can’t prove it using any of the usual methods. ”
Kenna sighed. “How are we supposed to dig up backgrounds on people who don’t exist, or who have multiple identities?
” She stuck to the wall farthest from the windows, just in case, watching as she moved for the red dot of a laser sight on her or Jax or the wall beside them.
Scanning. Staying vigilant. At least making herself feel better if not actually ensuring their safety.
Halfway along, she stopped and leaned against the wall. Jax was looking at papers left on a desk.
“I’ll keep digging,” Maizie said. “If we find multiple, that’s fine. But starting with this guy is easier because what President Tetherton gave us doesn’t yet match up to reality.”
“But we know he was a low-level staffer at the Pentagon.”
“From the file the president gave you, it seems he works for a branch of the army that deals with logistics. He’s a paper pusher, requisitioning more supplies for battalions.
In reality, who knows. It seems bland enough it’s possible it’s a cover for something else.
Something the Pentagon doesn’t want anyone to know about. ”
Jax glanced over at her.
Kenna smiled back and said to Maizie, “Stairns?”
“Craig talked my ear off for an hour about clandestine operations and off-book black ops stuff. Sounds like movies.”
“I bet.” Kenna chuckled. “I mean, I know it happens, but it’s nothing I’ve ever had to deal with. And if I can help it, maybe we don’t get involved in clandestine overseas operations.”
Jax smiled. “Too late.”
She shrugged. “You were co-opted into the resistance by the last president but look where that got him. It didn’t do my mom or dad any favors. Zeyla is…whatever Zeyla is. I still have no idea.”
“Bruce got burned by the CIA, but he seems to have done okay. He and Amara are working on the ghost thing as well.”
Jax looked at Kenna and mouthed, You didn’t tell her?
She shook her head, because she hadn’t explained what Dominatus wanted her to believe about Bruce.
She had no idea what their agenda was with attempting to convince her that he would betray her.
More likely, she should keep him close because they were trying so hard.
Either way, Maizie could just make up her own mind.
Kenna also hadn’t told anyone about Petyr’s assertions that he was her father. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t going to change anything in her life. With the caveat that if any of them touched a hair on her child’s head, then they’d have serious problems.
And that wasn’t just false bravado.
“Are you guys finding anything there?” Maizie asked.
Jax wandered over. “Just some random papers. Probably nothing we can get anything from, since we have that packet anyway.”
“Why did you go there?” Maizie asked.
“The car is outside, so we had to come back and get it,” Kenna said. “And the Baltimore police detective investigating Steven Braughton’s murder isn’t available for another hour and we needed something to do.”
“Okay, that makes sense.
Kenna moved to the nearest desk and sat on the edge.
She wanted to unzip her coat and peel it off because it was warm in here but also didn’t want to stay long enough for that.
“And we were here before the Secret Service kidnapped us and still wanted to take a look at the place the lawyers were working.”
Maizie said, “How can we prove they didn’t do what the FBI is accusing them of?”
“Good question,” Jax replied. “We can find evidence it was a setup and take the proof to the US Attorney’s office. Fight fire with fire.”
Kenna nodded. “Whoever they have as lawyers will be provided with all the evidence they need to make the US Attorney look like an idiot for filing charges. He’ll drop it because it won’t be worth the fight and put the blame squarely on the FBI for messing up so royally.”
Maizie groaned. “Sounds like politics, not justice.”
Jax smiled.
Kenna winked. “She gets it.”
“I’m so proud.” Jax chuckled, then glanced around. “Let’s get out of here.”
Kenna nodded. “We can get a smoothie on the way to meet the detective. What were the papers you were looking at?”
“Printer toner invoices. Pay stubs. Couple of supply lists, but they’re not for anything you’d do in an office.
” Jax shrugged. “On its own it’s nothing.
Trying to put it together would give you a load of theories with not much substance to back it up.
” He frowned. “Maizie, is there anything in the packet that can indicate what they were doing for the think tank, or who hired them for it?”
“I’ll dig more into who owns the Denari Foundation.
That might tell us. So far, the packet the lawyers handed us doesn’t say anything about who was behind it, or the scenario they were supposed to come up with.
Right now, it seems like a bunch of different things, but it had them on the street where the bomb detonated in the few days before the attack as well as on the day itself.
” Maizie made a hmm sound. “And it looks like they’re scouting the location—because that’s exactly what they were doing.
There’s also a whole dossier about destabilizing a treaty being signed on US soil. But it doesn’t say which treaty.”
“So all in all, it doesn’t look good for them.” Jax frowned. “Someone handed the FBI everything they needed to arrest the lawyers for trying to assassinate the Croatian President.”
“We should go talk to them,” Kenna suggested. “Find out what they can tell us.”
“I can find out where they’re being held.” Maizie paused. “See if you can get in for a visit.”
“Do that.” Jax shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We’ll meet with the detective about the murder in the meantime.”