Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Pueblo, Colorado
Fourteen Months Earlier
“The house is as it was when the police got here?” Maizie glanced over her shoulder, halfway down the hall, probably more excited than someone should be at a murder scene.
Kenna wasn’t going to dampen the young woman’s enthusiasm. She was simply going to walk slower due to the fact that she was just two or three weeks from her due date.
“That’s right.” Kenna followed her through the house with Jax and Zeyla behind them.
She could have had a local crime scene cleanup company come through but wanted Maizie to see the scene as it was after Shawn Terrance had been murdered. Unfortunately, that came with some unsavory smells.
Kenna tugged the small tin from her pocket and dabbed some menthol gel above her top lip, just enough to take the edge off the nausea.
Thirty-six weeks of pregnancy meant she was long past the perpetually sick feeling of the first trimester.
But who knew how her stomach would feel about the combination of the breakfast she’d had this morning and a murder scene.
Not her first. It probably wouldn’t be her last.
However, Kenna wasn’t here to work this scene. They’d taken the case so that Maizie could get some hours in undertaking an investigation that seemed to be in her wheelhouse.
She leaned against the open doorway into the living room, where Maizie stood by the TV, surveying the scene.
Jax squeezed Kenna’s arm and headed down the hall with Zeyla—who was, for all intents and purposes, Kenna’s sister.
The two of them went in and out of rooms off the hall, this time looking for evidence.
They’d already been through the house to clear it once, before Kenna and Maizie had even stepped foot inside, but this time would be a lot more methodical.
Maizie’s job was to draw conclusions from the scene itself.
Kenna folded her arms. “Are you surprised the police ruled it a home invasion gone wrong?”
“Not really. But is that what the evidence led them to believe, or was it just the easiest explanation?”
Maizie was a college student, a tech genius, and Kenna and Jax’s adopted daughter.
She also had more tragic history than anyone Kenna had ever met.
The young woman wanted to learn how to investigate crimes.
Kenna would be proud no matter what kind of life she carved out for herself, whether that was following in Kenna’s footsteps or not.
Or maybe this was only about Maizie and Zeyla taking on most of the legwork of Banbury Investigations cases while Kenna was at the end of her pregnancy and, soon, when she went on maternity leave.
Things were changing.
Not only had their lives shifted over the past two years, but they would continue to shift in the months to come.
Her phone, tucked in her coat pocket, remained silent more than she wanted it to.
Amara and Bruce were off doing who knew what.
Literally and figuratively. Kenna was waiting for a callback, or some kind of update, but they were curiously silent.
Ramon had gone to mutual associates, a group of former private security operatives on the front lines fighting their enemies.
He was also supposed to report in but hadn’t.
Kenna was out of the loop—and trying not to get frustrated at being the pregnant one everyone safeguarded and, as a result, no one talked to.
She focused on Maizie and the murder scene, which amounted to a cushion on the floor, instead of on the couch, and a wide bloodstain on the carpet. “What are you thinking?”
Maizie lifted out of her crouch and looked around.
“The police probably made the most logical assumption they could. We know now it might be more, because the victim’s sister asked us to look into it.
If she hadn’t provided us with those published web pages detailing his issues with the tech company he worked for, we would never have known Shawn was a whistleblower. ”
“Could just be a conspiracy with no basis in reality.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t like conspiracies, and neither do I,” Maizie said. “I get that from you.”
Kenna smiled. “What else can we learn from the house?”
Maizie looked around. “We need one of those K-9s trained to sniff out electronics.”
“If that would help, we could hire one.”
“Aside from that, I guess we just look everywhere, and assume the forensic evidence collection the police did must have missed something, I suppose.” She wandered a couple of steps to the fake fireplace and the empty mantel above.
“He was forty-two and a software engineer. He lived here for just over a year before he was killed. Not new to the company, just new to the place.”
“And?” Kenna could see the wheels turning behind her eyes.
“He started whistleblowing, or at least gathering information, around the time he moved. The two could be connected. Like he moved here because he was a whistleblower, maybe?”
“I wondered the same thing. It could be this place is cheaper, or more convenient. Lots of reasons people move. But it could also be that there’s something about this house he needed access to,” Kenna said.
“Especially when you consider the company might’ve been on to him.
A lot of his actions were those of someone who believed they were being watched. ”
Maizie looked up at the sensor in the corner of the room. “Is it normal to have internal cameras or sensors in your house?”
“Define normal, because I have no idea what it is.”
Maizie smiled at her, and they shared that moment. Neither of them were entirely used to what “normal” society, or the average person, did or experienced. They made their own way, sticking together as a family.
Kenna said, “If I had a house and a dog and a day job, I would put cameras in so I could check on my dog throughout the day.”
Maizie nodded. “Me, too.” She tipped her head to the side. “Are you and Jax going to get another house?”
Kenna wasn’t sure she was ready to share the recurring dream she’d been having lately.
“Maybe one day.” That was saying too much when it felt like a secret for her to hold in her heart.
Something she needed to set before the Lord, set it on the altar in prayer—as it were—and see what He might do with it.
She looked at the camera on the wall. “Can you hack his security system?”
Maizie lifted her chin. “Can you?”
“Fine.” Kenna laughed. “In the spirit of role reversal, I will attempt to ‘hack the system.’” She dug her cell phone out of her pocket. “Do I need a laptop? How will I get on the internet? Do you think his password will be hard to guess?”
Maizie bent double and started laughing. “You didn’t watch those training videos I sent you?”
“They were confusing!”
Maizie laughed harder.
“Maybe you should solve this murder old-school style, with footwork and research.” Kenna laced her fingers together and rested them on her baby bump. “Rather than relying on tech. It won’t be around forever.”
“Right now, an EMP sounds good. Throw society back into the nineteen hundreds, before technology ruined everything by connecting us all and making information accessible twenty-four seven.”
“I’m not sure where to start,” Kenna said. And she didn’t mean the murder. Nineteen hundreds? Oh, boy.
Maizie put her hands on her hips. “There are no signs of a break-in. So, unless the attacker is the best burglar in the world or he can move through walls, we can surmise that Shawn Terrance let his killer in.”
“If there’s a doorbell camera, we might be able to see who it is, but it’s likely the police already looked through what footage there is.
” If they had and the killer was there for all the world to see, then the person would be in custody.
“But like I said, survey the scene. Work through what we know. I’m more worried about his sister’s safety because I think whoever killed him was hired to do it. ”
“An assassin?” Maizie’s eyes lit up.
Kenna snorted. “With any luck, you’ll see them skulking around, probably dressed in all black like a ninja.”
“Spoilsport.”
Kenna grinned. “Anything else to see in here?”
“Not unless he’s got a secret room we don’t know about.”
Kenna waited.
Maizie eyed her. “You know something.”
Kenna shrugged. She’d looked through the photos on that real estate website and seen the difference between the living room when the house was purchased eighteen months ago—before it was turned into a rental property—and the living room in its current state.
A low-slung, dark gray sectional hugged the wall.
A TV unit was covered in cases for game console disks.
No art on the walls, but for a single man, maybe that wasn’t so surprising.
He hadn’t lived here long enough to make it his.
Except for the changes that—she assumed—he would’ve run by his landlord.
“What?”
Kenna said, “I studied the interior photos we found online before we came. The detailing in the wood columns of the fireplace surround isn’t the same.”
Maizie dashed over just as Jax and Zeyla came back in.
Zeyla glanced at Kenna, then at Jax and waved away whatever she saw.
“It’s been minutes. You guys don’t need to make moony eyes at each other because it’s been so long since you’ve seen each other.
” She stepped up behind Maizie. “What are we looking at?”
The young woman crouched, explaining about the detailing. “Maybe there’s a hidden compartment, or something.”
“Or he just liked this trim better than what was previously there.” Zeyla went to the other column.
What did Zeyla mean about “moony eyes”? Jax was just looking at her. Then again, when he looked at her like that. She cleared her throat. “Find anything?”
He shook his head, about to say something when the doorbell rang.
Maizie spun around, almost falling out of her crouch. “What do we do?”
Jax said, “You rely on your team.” He strode out of sight, down the hall.
Kenna pulled her gun because having it ready in her hand was always better than being caught off guard. She had no intention of getting into a gunfight, fistfight, or any other kind of fight.
She backed up to the wall and peered around the corner just as Jax opened the front door.
He held his gun behind his leg, out of sight.
He’d swapped his FBI suit for more casual clothes lately, and today he wore black boots, tactical black pants with plenty of pockets, and a long-sleeved Henley in light gray.
“Can I help you?”
A high-pitched squeal came from the doorstep, and Kenna spotted a flash of blonde hair beside his shoulder. “It is you! I thought I saw the team. Are you really all here in Pueblo? Are you investigating a murder?” The woman gasped. “Is it a serial killer?”
Jax stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him.
Kenna turned back to the fireplace and the two women in the living room. “Nosy neighbor came over to fangirl.”
Zeyla smirked. “You probably want to go out there and rescue your husband from an overzealous suburban housewife.”
“He’s a big, strong guy,” Kenna said. “I’m sure he can handle one woman.”
Maizie grasped the pillar on the left of the fireplace, wrapping her hands around it. She wiggled it away from the wall, and it popped free. “Here we go.”
Kenna wanted to cross the room and see, but right here, she had a better vantage point of the back patio door and the hallway. “What is it?”
Maizie dug behind the wood in what looked like a recess. Maybe a cutout in the wood used as a secret hiding place. “Flash drive.” She held it up. “I think this is what Shawn Terrance was killed for.”