Page 21 of Now or Never
Jax’s phone beeped on the table. He flipped it over to see the screen. “It’s a breaking news alert.”
“What’s going on?” She took a sip of the smoothie he’d bought her.
“A bomb just went off in Washington, DC, on a city street. Several cars were blown up.”
“Seriously?” Kenna said. “Any fatalities?”
“The number of casualties is unknown yet, but there are deaths and injuries on the scene. And a limo belonging to a Croatian delegation looks like it was the target.” With his head dipped to his phone, he didn’t see her reaction. “Apparently, they’re in town for a meeting with the president about a peace treaty between our two countries.”
She stared at him, not allowing her mind to show her memories she wanted to keep locked up tight.None of our business.“That’s scary. How horrible.”
Jax nodded. “There’s going to be a taskforce busy for weeks working this. Hope they find the bomber soon.”
She took another sip of the smoothie, which tasted sour in her mouth. “Me, too.”
Movement across the room caught her attention. When she looked she couldn’t believe who she saw. The smoothie got stuck in her throat, and she coughed, swallowed it, and managed not to choke.
“Everything okay?” Jax glanced from her to the spot across the room. “Did you see something?”
She looked again, but he was gone.
Kenna shook her head. “Just a ghost.”
Chapter Nine
Sitting outside was preferable at any time, but in the winter on the outskirts of Boston? Not so much. Kenna had the heater in the RV running, a mug of steaming decaf coffee in front of her, and the laptop open on the small dining table. On the screen she dragged facial features onto a blank canvas she was using to build a composite sketch of the man she’d seen in the hospital waiting area.
“Who is he?” Maizie’s voice came through her laptop speakers. Kenna had the volume turned low because she was up early but Jax was still asleep. In the corner window of the video meeting, Maizie peered closely at the image.
“Someone I thought was dead. Or hoped was dead.” Kenna deleted the eyes because they were too far apart and scrolled down the list. “Maybe I didn’t see him, I just thought I did.”
“That happened to me a lot.” Maizie’s gaze shifted to something else on her screen as she typed on her laptop keyboard. The view around her was the Airstream trailer Kenna had grown up in, the one her father had owned, currently parked on a hillside in Colorado on property owned by Kenna’s former boss from the FBI—now retired—where he lived with his wife.
“Elizabeth helped you work through it?” Kenna found eyes that were close enough and dragged them onto the face.
“You could talk to her. Let her help you.”
“I’d rather forget the whole thing.”
“Is that a good idea?” Maizie asked. “We’re not supposed to stuff it down. We’re supposed to deal with it so it doesn’t come back up and bite us when we least expect it. Because trust me,trauma—I hate that word—always resurfaces at the worst possible moment.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“You’re the one that’s supposed to be talking about it!”
Kenna glanced at the slider separating the bedroom from the living area of the RV, then to the window over the kitchen sink.
There weren’t more than a handful of occupied spaces in this campsite. Either they lived here year-round, or they were in town to visit relatives and didn’t mind braving the cold. Jax had mentioned Florida, and she had to admit that didn’t sound too bad right now. Except that it would feel like trying to run as far fromDominatusas she could get and that’s what being in Boston was supposed to be.
“I’m not running.”
“Well, yeah,” Maizie said. “But you’re avoiding all of it, even if you think you aren’t running away. But I think you are.”
“The case connected to them, but I didn’t drop it. I stuck with it, and now Megan and Joseph are safe.” Kenna took a sip of her coffee and scrolled through the images of lips.
“Hmm.”
Kenna ignored that. “Zeyla and Ramon are going to go and see Samantha Ambrose’s parents today so they can relay what Megan said about her death. They’ll probably want to do a DNA test and find out if Joseph really is her child.”
