Page 112 of Long Road Home

“That’s a great point,” Jax said.

She wanted to roll her eyes. He thought she was freaking out so he was being overly encouraging? Usually she didn’t have anyone around to give her reassurance. Partnerships didn’t usually go well. Especially when it was a man she cared about.

Kenna moved to the first image, zoomed in on the face, and took a photo. She had long hair and a gag over her mouth, but maybe they could get something off the nose and eyes shape that could get Maizie a facial recognition match. She took a photo of the man in the next image, which appeared to have been postmortem given that faraway look.

Lifeless eyes.

She walked all around the room, snapping images of their faces so that they uploaded to the file storage Maizie had set up online. Her phone rang a minute or so later, and she put the call on speaker. “Is there any way for you to see if the local dispatch has sent a fire truck my direction?”

“Hang on. I was looking at those photos.” Maizie paused. “You need a fire truck?”

“We’re locked in.”

“Oh, okay.” She sounded relieved.

“They can free you if you’re trapped.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should’ve tried the fire department.”

Kenna started. She turned to Jax, who was also staring at the phone. He lifted his gaze to hers, his brows raised. They both shrugged. The teen was joking about that? Or at least talking about years of captivity lightly.

“There’s nothing on the log they have online.”

Jax said, “I’ll call Paulette or whoever is on duty, have them transfer me to the dispatch supervisor.”

Kenna took the call with Maizie off speaker. “Thanks for checking.”

“What about these people?” the teen asked. “Or the work-up I have for Jennifer Rayland?” For a second, she sounded younger than she was.

“Anything interesting in her background?” Kenna didn’t want to think or talk about the images in this garage anymore than Maizie probably did.

“The house is paid off, and Rayland has been paying her money every month. Transferring it into her bank account. It covers the taxes and the utilities. She uses it to pay those bills.”

“You got into her online bank account portal?”

“If she didn’t want me to access it,” Maizie said, “sheshould’ve made the password something other than h-e-a-d-d-o-c.”

“Head doc?”

“Yeah, it didn’t take that long to crack.”

“I was thinking more like you’d find out if she has any other properties in her name, in case she’s at one of those rather than at home or at work.” They were only trying to find the woman. “Even if she’s got some kind of bizarre murder fetish, that doesn’t mean she killed her son. Or Bruce. Or did any of this other stuff.”

“Well, she doesn’t have another house. But she does have a boat. It’s registered in her father’s name still, but he dropped off the map years ago. There’s a newspaper article online about how the police were trying to find him. They questioned the family, but Mom and Jennifer had no knowledge of his whereabouts. Looks like his boss is the one who reported him missing.”

“A boat.” They could check that out, for sure. “Any idea where it is?”

“I’d have said it would be in that garage most likely or…”

“No dice.” The garage wasn’t wide enough, or tall enough, depending on the kind of boat. “And there are no external structures…unless Jax and I missed an outbuilding in the yard.” She glanced at him.

He stowed his phone and strode over. “Kobrinsky is with the state police, says he forgot to follow up. Paulette called the fire chief herself and confirmed the truck was dispatched. They say five minutes.”

“Okay.” That was good. “Did she say anything about Forrest?”

“Release is in the works. Gingrich is meeting with the coroner about the pastor and Deputy Rayland.”

“Before the fire department drags us out of herein a rescue, we need to figure out who these people are.” She motioned to the walls and caught a glimpse of something on the back of a photo that bowed in the middle. “She should’ve framed these if she wanted to keep them nice.”

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