Page 10 of Long Road Home

“She was hooked up to this slow-drip IV thing so Marion could kill her without getting her hands dirty. She just left the girl in there to die. Can you believe that?”

“She’s alive?” It sounded like Kenna got there just in time.

Another case solved.

But his was barely treading water.

Maybe she would consider coming to San Diego and looking at the case files, since she had closed hers. Not that the FBI needed the help of a private investigator. At least, not officially. It didn’t look good for them to be asking for help all the time. But fresh eyes, and fresh ideas? Regardless of what his boss might’ve said, sometimes they needed a little out-of-the-box thinking. She might see something they never would because, while she might’ve been an FBI agent at one time, Kenna Banbury wasn’t one now.

She’d probably never thoughtinthe box when she’d been an agent.

Jax needed the medical plan that came with his job. Going freelance would be way too expensive considering how often he got hurt. He could understand why Kenna never wanted to be seen by a doctor. She had a trust fund and a past that meant she distrusted hospitals and doctors. Thanks to his mother, Jax had been cut off for the egregious choice of becoming a cop, and couldn’t afford his own plan.

Until something changed, or God said differently.

Maizie said, “She’s alive. The girl should make a full recovery.”

He headed for his car. “That’s amazing.” After it had connected to his car Bluetooth system, Jax headed for the apartment he rented.

“Now she’s got me looking into the deaths of the lady she lives with’s family. You know…the car accident?”

“Sure.” He knew about that. Maizie had told him that before.

Now, she mentioned a note and the suspicions surrounding the accident.

His brows rose. “Someone thinks it was murder? Or knows it was?”

“I’m gonna find out what’s up with the accusation, and Kenna is going to make sure the kidnapping case is all wrapped up,” Maizie said. “I can send you a copy of the note.”

“You should probably not, though.” He had enough work with the FBI and didn’t want to cross streams—or get in trouble. “Just keep me posted, and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help that doesn’t involve using FBI resources.”

“Copy that.”

Jax slowed with the freeway traffic. “You okay, kid?”

Maizie didn’t speak right away.

“Something on your mind? About the case, or something else?” He tried to tread carefully given her past, and the fact she was technically a minor and he was a grown man. Though, there was nothing childish about Maizie. She’d started updating him on Kenna’s whereabouts and how things were going after Mexico. He hadn’t shut it down because he wanted to know. But it hadn’t ever delved past work into personal with Maizie, and how things were going withher.

“What was Christmas at your house like?”

Jax frowned at the ocean of brake lights in front of him. “Holidays at the big house. Right. Ask my mother, she’d say it wasperfect, which means the decorations are so beautiful you’re scared to touch them. Too much alcohol consumed by several family members, who then have to be escorted to a separate sitting room by the housekeeper. My father fell asleep in his easy chair with an empty glass beside him. Mymother fussed the entire time, and so did my sister’s baby, but she didn’t help with that. She also didn’t sit down.

“This year my sister’s husband was called to the hospital to perform an emergency heart valve replacement before we even had dinner, so she and I snuck up to the media room as soon as we could and watched a couple of terrible small-town romance Christmas movies and ate too much pie.”

“So it was good?”

“It has things I love, things that are nostalgic and I’d miss them if they were gone, and things I’d like to see change.” Jax bit the bullet and asked, “What about you? What was Christmas like?”

This most recent holiday season had been her first one out from the control of the man who had held her captive her entire life—until last year. She’d been terrorized, brutalized. And that was just what he could imagine that evil man had done.

“He never did that,” Maizie said. “Decorations. Dessert.”

No, I don’t imagine he did.But what Jax did imagine made him sick to his stomach. “And Christmas with the Stairns family, and Kenna?”

“It wasn’t that either. And I just…”

When it didn’t seem like she would continue, he said, “I’m sorry.”

---