Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hum of the air conditioner was a steady white noise in the silence of the Rivian.
As we both sat there, staring at my front door from half a block down the road, I wondered if anyone would actually show up or if the police activity and Noah’s poking around had spooked them.
Between us sat Kenna’s very expensive-looking camera, mounted on a gimble and pointed directly at my front door.
It was the kind of thing that only someone who drove a Rivian to a stakeout might have, but I had to admit it was a nice set up.
Behind me Rogue let out a little huff, and I glanced back at him to find that he’d settled his massive body along the entire back seat as he spread out, bored and dozing.
“Thanks for letting me bring him,” I said. “I wasn’t comfortable leaving him at your brother’s place alone. He’s something of an escape artist.”
“He’s a cutie,” Kenna said, and Rogue’s tail thumped against the passenger side door at her voice. I turned to find her also looking back at the Cane Corso making himself at home in her back seat. My gaze flicked to the apartment door, just in case, but nothing had changed.
“He knows it, too,” I replied. “Yesterday he stole an entire slice of bacon off my plate before I could stop him.”
Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and I turned to find that Rogue’s head had popped up at his new favorite word, one ear perking up as he peered at me. I narrowed my eyes at him and shook my head. He slumped down again, letting out another one of those put-upon sighs.
“Oh, poor baby,” Kenna cooed. I rolled my eyes, turning around to give my full attention to the stakeout.
Whoever had been gaining access to my apartment had done so on more than one occasion.
Which meant they were either looking for something and hadn’t found it, or, more disturbingly, they wanted to be in my space when I wasn’t there.
The problem was if it wasn’t Kenna, and it wasn’t the FBI on my tail, did that mean I had another stalker?
My thoughts went back to that basket that had been left on my doorstep.
What if that had been for me, after all?
I appreciated Kenna at least believed me enough to be willing to help. She was a P.I. after all. Watching people was her job. Still, it wasn’t like I could pay her. But given she’d had eyes on me all week I felt like she owed me. Maybe she did too.
The problem was if we didn’t catch this guy in the act today, I wouldn’t have time to try again until my day off next week and I wasn’t sure I could stand returning to this apartment once Trick was back in town.
“Yes, poor Rogue,” I said in a mocking tone, but the truth was that I did feel bad for him.
The rotating door of foster families was unusually long and the fact that no one knew how he’d injured his tail only made my heart bleed for him even more.
He was big, energetic, and full of love.
A massive teddy bear that happened to drool and steal your bacon.
Yet here he was living with me when there was every chance that one day we would both be back behind bars.
I wasn’t going to let that happen, I decided. No matter how many times he ran away, wandered off, or scared someone by snarling at them, I wasn’t going to let him go back to that shelter. And I wasn’t going to let the FBI or anyone else take me away from him.
“So…” Kenna said, trying to fill the silence that stretched between us.
“…have you done any good hikes lately?” I froze, trying to think of any hikes I could name that weren’t Benham Trail.
Before I could think of an answer, she let out a little chuckle.
“I’m kidding. But if you’re going to stick with that as your cover story you really should get a few hikes under your belt or people might begin to get suspicious. ”
“I haven’t had much time for hiking,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly true but knowing what I did about how Lexi went missing, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the one day I’d spent on the trail or that Rogue had come into my life because of it.
“What do you do in your downtime, then?” she asked. There was only light curiosity in her voice, the kind that came with making conversation when you were stuck together waiting for something that might not even happen.
“I read,” I replied, which was true. I’d spent more than a normal amount of time reading everything the news had put out on Monica’s death, compiling information on the case in the desperate hope that something would stand out.
Some innocuous line from a neighbor vying for their fifteen minutes of fame or some detail that the reporters had access to that I didn’t.
So far, nothing useful had come up.
“You don’t strike me as a fantasy reader,” Kenna said, “or science fiction. I could see you getting into true crime, though.”
“True crime drives me crazy,” I replied, taking a sip from the bottle of water I’d brought along and then pouring a little into a bowl I’d stolen from Trick’s apartment and offering it to Rogue.
“They’re always biased towards one suspect or another, and half the time the evidence they have is just nonsense. ”
“Ah,” Kenna said, drawing the word out. “You’re a non-fiction reader, aren’t you? You like facts, evidence, and the driest sentences man can possibly put together. I bet it’s killing you that you’ve been benched like this.”
“It is, a little,” I admitted. While she was off with the assumption that I spent my free time reading non-fiction and she didn’t have the full picture of my situation I realized it was nice to be able to talk to someone who understood what I was going through on some level.
“Honestly, being on this stakeout is the most comfortable I’ve felt in weeks. ”
“Well, next time I need to stake out an adulterous husband I’ll be sure to give you a call first,” Kenna said, and I snorted, glancing over at her only to find that she was looking at me with genuine consideration.
I squirmed under her gaze, hating that the idea of going on another stakeout when I hadn’t even finished this one actually sounded delightful.
“Do you end up on many stakeouts?” I asked, trying to divert her attention.
“Too many, if you ask me.” Kenna sighed, fiddling with the camera in her lap.
“It’s eighty percent of what I do. Honestly, when I started working for Huele, my entire plan was to trade my grunt work for his expertise in tracking Lexi down, but by the time I hit the fifteen hundred hours needed to get my license, I fell in love with the job. ”
“Then why do you sound so frustrated?” I watched a woman slowly walking down the sidewalk with her hands in her pocket.
“Because most of my cases come from the bored housewives of rich men who are convinced their husbands are cheating,” Kenna replied. “The hazard of being born into wealth and marrying wealthier. The only cases that cross my desk are frivolous and the outcomes hardly matter.”
“If you’re so well off, why do it in the first place?” I pointed out. Kenna shrugged.
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself for months,” she told me. “That’s why I was traveling. I wanted to—oh! There, do you see that?”
I snapped my focus back to my apartment, disappointed in myself for getting distracted.
There was nobody there, though. Scanning along the rows of apartments, I found the figure Kenna’s camera was focused on three doors down.
The figure had his back turned to the road, facing the apartment door.
Wearing baggy jeans and a hoodie it was impossible to tell anything identifying about them.
For all I knew, it could have been the renter of that apartment.
Still, Kenna lifted her camera, the sound of the shutter telling me she’d taken a photo.
“Probably just the tenant,” she said, staring down at the display screen. “Anyway, I started traveling again because I got tired of proving those bored housewives right.”
Silence settled between us as I considered her predicament.
A quiet, mean voice in the back of my mind whispered that at least she had the freedom to look into those cheating husbands and prove their crimes, but even as I had the thought, I knew it wasn’t fair.
If I were Kenna, free to investigate and unencumbered by financial or legal complications, I wouldn’t be satisfied with personal grievance cases either.
“Cold cases,” I said after a moment of consideration.
She sent me a confused look and I explained.
“If you want to make a real difference and aren’t finding any current clients with real problems to solve, there are hundreds of unsolved cases you could look into.
Oregon’s missing person’s database alone would give you enough work to last a lifetime. ”
Kenna’s shoulders slumped and I went back over my words, trying to find fault in my logic.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and I got the feeling that I’d hit a nerve she was trying to soothe.
Looking back at the apartment complex, I fought the urge to keep talking until I found a way out of whatever had left the uncomfortable silence between us.
Across the street, the man from before stepped out of his apartment and Kenna brought the camera back up, taking a photo of him from the front.
“Trying to solve another missing person’s case feels like a betrayal to Lexi,” Kenna said as she lowered the camera and the reason for the awkward silence clicked into place.
Of course, Kenna and I were a lot alike when it came to what was driving us.
My mother’s case had sent me through an entire criminal justice degree and the FBI Academy in hopes of solving it.
Kenna’s missing friend had sent her on a parallel path to becoming a private investigator.
And Kenna didn’t have the guidance that Monica had given me. All she had was the guilt of not being able to solve the one case she had been trying to solve for seven years now.
“I’ve been curious about Lexi’s disappearance ever since Gracie told me about her.
Working the same cold case for too long can give you tunnel vision, you know?
” I told her, and then I did something that I never would have considered two years ago, echoing the advice that Monica had given me when we first met.
“Sometimes solving a different case can shake something loose in one you’re stuck on. ”
Kenna hummed, but her eyes were on the apartment complex, and I wasn’t entirely sure she had heard me. The camera came back up and she looked through the viewfinder, another shuttered click echoing through the car.
“Gotcha,” she said, and I turned to look at my apartment door, but there was no one there. Kenna grinned, vicious and triumphant as she turned the camera’s display screen towards me and showed me the image she had captured.
There, caught like a fly in amber as he stood in the open doorway of my apartment, was the same man who had come out of the apartment two doors down from me.