Chapter 16
Sixteen
Luca laid his belongings in the plastic tray and pushed it into the scanner just before nine a.m. The first time they’d been allowed to speak with Jenkins, and they’d had to wait two days for permission.
He walked through the metal detector at Renegade Correctional, and the officer waved him forward.
“You’re good.”
Luca nodded to him. “Thanks.”
The officer on the other side of the scanner took Luca’s bin of personal belongings and slid them onto a wire shelving unit behind him.
Most of the police department was on the lookout for Dr. Torres, as well as still debating the issue of whether he’d been kidnapped or was simply missing.
No one at the police department wanted to punt the case to the FBI office in town, but if there had been a kidnapping, that might prove necessary.
He turned to Kira, who had just been waved through the scanner. She watched her belongings get transferred to the shelf.
Luca said, “You get them back when you leave.”
He had explained a little bit about how it worked to go into the prison and the restrictions on what they could take with them. Since they were only here to speak with Jenkins, they didn’t need any files or personal items.
“I’ve never been in here before.” She glanced around, assessing the white-walled lobby and the handful of corrections officers mingling outside the security office to the left.
Ahead of them was a long hallway sectioned off by gates that could only be opened by somebody in the security office releasing the lock.
“Are you nervous?”
She smiled at him, looking a little tentative. “It’s just new.”
“You’ve faced worse than this.”
“And lived to tell about it. Except not, because it was classified.”
Put the woman in the middle of a refugee camp under fire, in the middle of disease outbreaks, or in the hospital in Renegade, and she rose to the occasion. With medicine, she knew what she was doing. She could take charge, and everything she did was with confidence.
Outside of her work in the emergency department, it seemed like she wasn’t convinced she could handle much else. Luca didn’t know if that was true. He figured she could withstand a whole lot more than she knew. But maybe she simply didn’t want to.
A highly trained covert operative had nearly killed her. Kira had ended his life in self-defense and saved a lot of people in the process. That wasn’t the work of a woman who couldn’t handle a dangerous job.
He understood the need to take a break, recharge, and heal from burnout.
It seemed more like someone had convinced her that she had to keep everything small and not step out of her comfort zone in order to be safe.
Trusting herself would go a long way to proving what she could do.
Luca could only do so much to convince her that she was stronger than she knew.
It seemed more like God needed to take the fear and change her heart for her to live with boldness.
“This way.” One of the officers waved them to the door. “Jenkins is already waiting for you.”
They were buzzed through the gate and entered the hallway, going all the way to the last interview room. But Luca could still see the door to the security office at the end of the hall. Not to mention all the cameras and other measures to keep visitors safe and inmates from escaping.
The officer pulled the door open. “I’ll be out here.”
Jenkins sat at the table, wearing the same orange jumpsuit and shackled to the floor. He was upright, but seriously pale. The former mayor glanced between the two of them as if nothing was wrong, like he hadn’t been stabbed a week ago. “You brought me a friend?”
Kira tried to pull out one of the chairs, but it was bolted to the floor. “There’s no call for being disgusting.”
Luca sat beside her. “We needed to talk to you. If you give us the answers we want, we’ll get out of your hair and you can go back to…whatever it was you were doing.”
“Stay as long as you like.” Jenkins sat back in the chair. “My social calendar is wide open.”
“What do you know about Dr. Torres?”
Jenkins shrugged. “Who’s that?”
“You know who he is,” Luca said. “The guy has been prominent in Renegade society for years, and he’s well known for his medical research.”
“I was in real estate. Not all that hospital stuff.”
“Turns out he’s also in real estate. The guy has property all over the city, commercial and residential. I’m really surprised you didn’t bump into each other.”
Kira laced her fingers together in her lap. “I’m surprised they didn’t bid against each other.”
Jenkins’s expression shifted, his lips curling into a sneer for a second, then it was gone. “Fine, I hated the guy with the fire of a thousand suns. So what?”
Luca rested one forearm on the table. “Someone ransacked his house, and now he’s missing.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I’ve been in here the whole time.” Jenkins seemed to find that hilarious.
“But you haven’t been here the whole time,” Kira pointed out. “You were in the hospital after you got injured.”
Jenkins leaned forward slightly. “You mean after someone tried to kill me?”
“Stuart Parker is in solitary, and you’re back here acting like nothing ever happened,” Luca said. “Why don’t you tell me who would pay someone to try and kill you? Then we can put a stop to it.”
“You want to keep me safe. That’s so nice of you.”
“I don’t want Mack to lose his father,” Luca said. “What happens between the two of you is up to you.”
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to see the light.”
Luca’s brother had told him that exact thing, but the truth was, he would always want the best for Amir.
Not just his help. Now that Luca had found the peace that came from a relationship with Jesus, he wanted that for his brother as well.
Amir would still have to serve out his sentence, but redemption happened in the heart, and freedom came in all kinds of ways.
“Why’d you tell me that Ralph Rousseau was the head of the Shadow Syndicate?”
Jenkins said, “Because he is.”
“Then it’s was, because he’s dead now.” Luca gave him a second to absorb that, then said, “Someone tried to kill you, and they succeeded in killing Ralph. It doesn’t make any sense that he would be targeted if he’s the head of the Shadow Syndicate.”
Jenkins just stared at them. Probably trying to figure out what was going on as much as Luca.
“Who targeted you?”
“If I knew that,” Jenkins said, “they’d be dead.”
“This is bigger than you. It’s bigger than your scheme that you had going on, trying to grab up land for the mineral rights.”
Kira shifted in her seat and glanced at him. “Minerals like lithium.”
“What is it?” Luca asked her.
She shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.” Then she looked at Jenkins. “What do you want with all that lithium? Where was it going?”
The skin around Jenkins’s eyes contracted.
Luca said, “Who wanted to buy it from you?”
Jenkins leaned forward. “Ralph Rousseau.”
“Is that the truth?” Was this guy purposely misleading him, or did he really believe what he was saying?
If their business about mineral rights was the basis for Jenkins’s assumption that Ralph was the head of the Shadow Syndicate, then he could be wrong about that. Ralph was far more likely just another middleman doing their bidding. Maybe neither of them knew who was in charge of the syndicate.
This entire thing could be nothing but hearsay, pointing fingers.
Meanwhile, it felt like whoever was in charge of the Shadow Syndicate was laughing, thinking they were safe from the investigation.
“Doesn’t matter now. He’s dead. I’ll be dead pretty soon.” Jenkins shrugged.
“The police and corrections officers are doing what they can to keep you safe.” Luca wasn’t sure they could do more than that. No one was going to leave Jenkins unprotected, but the truth was that he was living with the consequences of his choices.
Jenkins shook his head. “Whatever.”
“It would help if you knew who was calling the shots. I could pass that information to the police, and they can help you.”
“I told you what I know, and I was nearly killed for it. I’m not about to tell you anything else, or I’m likely to end up hanging by a noose in my cell.”
Luca leaned forward a little. “Mack deserves to have a father who is alive and at least trying to do the right thing for once.”
“Sounds like work. Better to die a martyr and let the kid move on with his life.”
“That’s what you want?” Kira said. “I know Mack well enough that he’s told me stories about Hammer and the rest of the Trouble Boys. All the adventures they got up to, fighting wildfires and saving the world. But do you know what? He didn’t once mention you.”
Mack hadn’t mentioned his father because he didn’t want to face the reality of who his dad was. Or so Luca presumed. The kid didn’t want to deal with the fact that he loved his father but the old man continually hurt all of them. Emotionally and physically.
In a lot of ways, Mack was similar to Kira.
Instead of facing the fear, he’d hidden away and buried his head in the sand.
Now he was having to face the reality of who his father was.
But in the middle of that, he’d chosen to make a life for himself and find a career he could love.
Focusing on work seemed to be a common tactic between Kira and Mack, which was probably why they got along.
Luca’s tendency was to do whatever job was in front of him, and it had worked for him for a long time.
Going from occupation to occupation. From the military to fighting wildfires.
Sure, there was a theme, but he appreciated change more than he liked one particular type of work.
He enjoyed being an investigator but wasn’t sure he wanted to do that forever.
Once they took down the syndicate, he would probably find something new to do.
“My family,” Jenkins said, “my business. Not yours.”
“Tell me what the lithium was for,” Kira said.