Page 112 of End Game

“They wouldn’t have. Service is a group of highly intelligent women.” Kayla gave it some thought. “Mason is even more strategic than I am. Knowing him as I do, he would’ve found out everything he could about an organization wanting him to assassinate the governor.”

She lasered in more. “We don’t have a website or business cards or offices. Everything we do for Service is in addition to our other jobs and responsibilities. They wouldn’t have identified themselves, but they would have set up a communication system.” She stared up at the pulpit. “I know how this will sound, but . . . I still trust him.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She bolted to her feet and began pacing. “I believe him to be an honorable man. Something forced him to become a contract killer. I feel it in my bones.” Pausing beneath a stained-glass window depicting one of the fourteen Stations of the Cross—number six, where Veronica wipes the sweat-covered face of Jesus—she waited for Ash to point out the contradiction to her statement.

Mason could have killed her and Vicky, but he chose to break his contract instead. Yet he terminated Seb Grimball with seemingly no remorse.

“Let’s set aside Wade’s motives for now. What if a faction of Service developed a new plan, and you and Governor Stokes didn’t play into it—or something you were working on together put a crimp in their playbook?”

Kayla turned around slowly, her mind running a million miles an hour. “Maybe Vicky found out about a rogue faction and that’s what she wanted to talk to me about.”

Ash rose and edged toward her as if any sudden movements would snap the thread she was mentally pulling on. Her mind flashed back to Jillian wanting to hire additional security for Kayla. Sybil and Elsie insisting Kayla stay close to Ash in order to get the latest on the homicide case. Jillian’s secret meeting with Service’s Eastern U.S. Coordinator. Indira cautioning her to not discuss Jillian’s odd disappearance with other Service members.

“You thought of something?”

“No one has seen or heard from Mom since this morning. She set up a last-minute meeting with our regional coordinator, but didn’t show.”

“You think Jillian intended to share her suspicions with—what was her name? Indira?”

Kayla nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Sybil and Elsie have gone dark, too.” Her throat tightened. “What if Seb Grimball had a partner?”

“Someone besides Wade?”

“Although he didn’t admit to killing Grimball, it was clear he had.”

“Why, I wonder?”

“Maybe he feared Grimball would go after me again.”

“Or Grimball got a good look at him in the garden.”

“You’re determined to paint him as a villain.”

“It’s a flaw I have when people accept money to kill others.”

Her phone chimed. She put the caller on speaker. “What’d you find out, Susannah?”

“Mrs. Krowne booked a first-class flight from Asheville Regional Airport to O’Hare International,” Jillian’s assistant confirmed, “but the airline has no record of her boarding.”

The phone slipped from Kayla’s hand, shattering against the chapel’s wooden floor.

54

“What do you need us to do?” Cruz asked, after Ash finished filling his brothers in on the governor’s murder and Seb Grimball, the vandalism to Kayla’s vehicle, the blood spatter matching Mason Wade’s DNA and his link to Service, and Jillian Krowne’s disappearance.

Ash lifted his head from his hands and took in the various expressions on their faces.

Phin paced in front of the Annex’s kitchenette, a worried expression replacing the charismatic smile he normally wore. Rohan sat hunched over his laptop, working his hacker magic on the new information Ash just supplied. Cruz leaned back in his chair, hands locked behind his head and one booted foot anchored over a thick thigh. Zeke stood at the end of the table like a thundercloud hovering over a city, deciding which meteorological torture device it would unleash on the denizens below.

After Kayla’s devastating phone call with her mom’s assistant, she’d collapsed in his arms and nothing he said or did had soothed her anguish and fear. So, he proceeded the only way he knew how. Called in feminine reinforcements.

Liv and the other ladies had swept into the chapel, gathered up an inconsolable Kayla, and marshaled her back to the Friary. Ash, furious and feeling more helpless than he ever had in his life, had punched a hole in the pulpit.

A dry voice behind him had said, “You’re going to hell now, brother.” Zeke motioned for him to follow. “Come on. Let’s get you bandaged and put your mind to work, rather than your fists.”

That was thirty minutes and two fingers of Defiant ago, and Ash’s helpless rage still simmered in his gut like acid. “Hell if I know,” he said, flexing his bandaged hand. “Everything has hit a dead end, and I have zero leads.”

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