Page 1 of Every Which Way

ChapterOne

Kenna Banbury had gone into some dark places in her life, searching for the lost and forgotten. Solving cases. Catching bad guys. But there weren’t many places worse than corporate America. Wearing a pantsuit and low heels. She had her hair in braids and wore thick-rimmed glasses to somewhat disguise herself.

She stood at the front of the conference room, where the employees had filed in. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure you’re all eager to get back to work.”

A rumble of chuckles spread across the crowd. Maybe fifteen people, in rows of six chairs, all faced her.

“For now, there are donuts on the side table, and we have coffee. Just in case you’d like a treat.”

Half the room got up.

In her earpiece, Maizie said, “Set your phone somewhere closer to the west wall.”

Her tech support guru, nearly an adult but not quite, had been raised as the captive of a deviant man with the power to keep her hidden from the world. Now that she was free, Maizie was thriving. Partly because she was in the van outside, being protected by Ramon, so that she was “part of the team” for this mission, out in the field working with them. Trying to take down an international organization, or at least the US arm of it. From what Maizie had figured out, the organization had funneled money through this finance company, laundering illegally obtained funds and making themselves look legitimate.

Maizie said, “You need to be nearer, or I won’t be able to establish a connection.”

Kenna got her phone from the table behind her, where she’d set it because the pockets in these pants might fit a sticky note but not much else. She moved it to another table against the wall, which held flyers and leaflets about respect, kindness, and the supposed reason they were here—sexual harassment.

As she walked back to the front of the room, Stairns crossed from the far wall to meet her in the middle. Her former boss from the FBI—a lifetime ago now—unofficially worked for her. The retiree looked about as happy to be back in a suit as she was.

“Please take your seats.” Kenna smiled, keeping her posture open so she’d come across as being here to help. Not to hack their network from the inside and trace the money the “company” laundered through this place.

“Thank you for coming, even if you didn’t have much choice.” She scanned the crowd, pinpointing the ones she’d be able to make eye contact with so that she could feel as if she was connecting to someone and not talking to blank expressions or bowed heads because they were on their phones. “But this is a topic I’m passionate about as a survivor.”

She wasn’t going to lie, so she couldn’t tell them an untrue story about sexual assault. But Kenna had been the victim more times than she liked. That much would be true. And shehadbeen touched in the wrong situation in ways she didn’t want by someone who had ill intent. Up close and personal with a monster, a killer. Even if she didn’t consider it sexual assault. Sometimes, it was just the job.

Where itdidn’tneed to be the job was here.

“Thank you for listening to me. It’s part of my healing journey that I get to share my experiences with you here today, and while I’m not going to go into detail that might make some of you uncomfortable, I can say this. Any of us can find ourselves, at any time, in a situation that makes us nervous or scared. Or one that we realize too late we want out of.”

One of the young guys in the crowd glanced at the donuts, like he wanted to go get one. Slender. Probably five-foot-six tops, and maybe mid-twenties but only barely.

The woman beside him, taller at the shoulder, reached over. Did she pinch or poke him?

The young man winced and returned his attention to the front. He realized right away that Kenna had seen that.

This woman was bold, doing that in a situation like this. Or she was so accustomed to it she barely even noticed when she did something to…what? Keep him in line?

“Have any of you been in a situation like that?”

The whole thing had happened in a second, and now the young man didn’t raise his hand. He sat there, kowtowed into silence. Kenna might be wrong or reading more into it than there was, but her instincts didn’t usually fail her. These days, those instincts were wrapped in the kind of discernment Paul urged the Philippians to have.

A few people in the room raised their hands, and she smiled warmly at them. “Whether we’re prepared to admit it in front of others or not, the pain—or the fear—can still be real. Often, it’s stronger when we keep it to ourselves. When we speak what happened aloud, the thing loses its power. It loses its hold on us.”

Before they concluded she was going to ask them to share their darkest experiences, Kenna said, “Let’s all stand and push the chairs to the wall. Maybe stack them. Let’s do a little self-defense scenario, and hopefully, you’ll go away with some tools to protect yourself.”

While everyone stacked the chairs, and a couple of the men got another donut, Kenna tried not to be distracted by the young man. After all, he could be on a diet, and the woman simply had a habit-breaking way to hold him to his promise not to eat donuts. It might not be a relationship or a power imbalance between the two of them.

She turned to her papers on the table at the front and whispered, “Are you in yet?”

Stairns gave orders behind her, directing people to pair up and spread out so they wouldn’t swing their arms and whack each other.

Maizie said, “It’s not close enough. I’m only getting an intermittent signal, but I’m going to try and get into their system with this. Standby.”

Kenna turned back to the group. “All right, everyone has their partner?” She glanced around, clocking more than she let on. The young man had paired up with the woman who’d been sitting beside him.

Kenna walked over to Stairns in the center. “The biggest threat you face is the one you don’t see coming.”

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