Page 17 of One More Chance

Maybe whatever had happened at work today meant he didn’t have the bandwidth for the threat ofDominatusright now. Which was fine, unless she really had been kidnapped by them this afternoon. That wasn’t something either of them could ignore.

Or, at least,shecouldn’t.

He set the packaged steaks on the counter and went to the back patio door. She loved sitting outside in the evening watching the sunset, finally able to share her whole life with Jax. It was part of her happily ever after that she was here full time, not just with her RV temporarily parked in the garage.

He loved his job at the FBI, even if he might have wanted to quit a few times to go on the road and solve cases with her. His work at the bureau gave him access to channels that would be useful in the fight againstDominatus.

Kenna called Maizie, who picked up after a couple of rings. She put the phone on speaker and decided to make potatoes, because they made everyone feel better.

“Quiet afternoon?”

“Not exactly.” Kenna explained the events of the past fifteen minutes. “My arm hurts where they stuck me with a needle. Can you check?—”

“The security cameras. Good idea.”

Even before she’d moved in, Jax had installed security cameras inside the house in the kitchen and living room andoutside in the front and in the backyard. If she’d supposedly deactivated the alarm when she got home at three thirty-five, there would be no movement logged inside after that because it was set to turn off when she got home. Otherwise, every movement through the house would be constantly tracked and sending notifications to both of them. But it was possible the footage showed something from inside the house.

“Grab your laptop. You can look at the same time.”

“Thanks, Maze.” Kenna had to make the circuit of the house twice to find where her laptop was, discovering it on the lower shelf of the end table in the living room. “Why is this here?”

She had no idea when she’d put it there or the last time she’d looked at it.

This whole thing was off. Was it her or something that’d been done to her? How was she supposed to figure it out? She sat at the breakfast bar and prayed while her laptop turned on, asking for wisdom.

“Click that.”

A window popped up asking for her permission for someone to remotely log in to her laptop. Kenna accepted the request, and her mouse started moving. Windows opened, and Maizie logged on to the site for the security system.

“I want to see when I came home.”

Maizie said, “The outside camera should show you pulling into the garage.”

Which meant Jax would have had an alert that she got home. “What time?”

Jax had more information than she did about what had happened to her this afternoon, considering the notification would have told him that she had arrived hours ago. Apart from the groceries being put away, or maybe including that, everything seemed like it added up to her being so tired she had been on autopilot.

But none of that explained the needle mark on the inside of her arm.

Aside from going and getting more blood tests, she couldn’t know what they’d done to her. And even if she did that, who was to say the results wouldn’t be just the same as the previous round? Nothing was wrong with her except elevated calcium levels.

She sipped more juice, watching Maizie scroll back to three this afternoon. “There it is.”

Maizie hitPlay, and Kenna’s car pulled onto the drive. The car stopped in front of the closed garage door, then the door started to roll up.

Jax came back into the kitchen, got a tray and wire rack, and opened the steaks. He laid them on the wire rack and seasoned the meat.

She couldn’t really enjoy watching him do that because she had no idea what had happened to her. “I always hit the garage door button when I pass the mailbox. Why would I wait until I was on the drive? If I was out of it, I could’ve plowed into the garage door and destroyed it.”

The car pulled into the garage.

“There’s interior footage until the alarm turns off, right?” She wouldn’t say, “until I turned the alarm off” because right now she wasn’t convinced it had been her in the car.

It would be convenient if this was a ruse. If someone else had brought her car home, unpacked her groceries, and then later—while the alarm was off—put her on the bed so she woke up here at home.

A nice, neat answer to her questions.

But when had life ever given her nice, neat answers?

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