Page 77 of One More Chance

Jax said, “Kenna and I will head upstairs.”

He led her back to the bottom of the staircase that wrapped around a plant or some kind of tall artwork that stretched from the ground floor up two stories in the small space between flights of stairs. If she touched it, would it clank together, or would she accidentally knock it over?

Three followed them.

She spotted him on the turn between floors, unsure if he was sticking with them to back them up or for another, more nefarious, reason. “In which room did you receive your treatment?”

“Up here.” He motioned up the stairs. “I’ll show you.”

“And his staff?”

“Wearing old-timey medical outfits.”

“And creepy white masks?”

His footsteps faltered. “How did you know?”

“Because I’ve seen them. These people take whoever they want. They do whatever they want.” And they were currently ruining her happily ever after.

Jax stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to her, swiveling his head around. Protecting her. Okay, so maybe her life wasn’t beingruined, but that didn’t mean she had to like what was happening.

Three caught up to her and reached the top at the same time as she did. “What do you mean, ‘these people’?”

Jax moved them all away from the edge of the stairs.

She said, “Dominatus.Buzard works for them, and they’re probably the reason he’s doing all this. Some part of their master plan means they need people who are souped-up…or whatever he did to us.” A lot of that was conjecture, but why make her stronger if he didn’t intend to use her for something? “Did he make your bones denser?”

Three headed down the hall, not answering her question. At the end, he spread wide a set of double doors and stepped into the room. “He did a lot of things. Experimenting. Working out the kinks of his genetic research, finding new ways to solve the problems his procedures created.”

He stepped into the room, which had a row of empty medical beds. Darkened screens on all the monitors. Big plastic sheets had been set up around the beds so each one could betemperature controlled—the patient zippered in a small plastic room and kept apart from the others.

Three continued, “In the beginning, there were nine of us.”

Words sat on the tip of her tongue but never emerged. Would he be on board for taking down the doctor? The lawyers she’d met were all in for it. Their fight was about getting someone to testify to what he’d done. Three might have evidence. The weight of all of them testifying could force a judge to rule against Marcus Buzard. He would be shut down for good.

But those lawyers were also intertwined with other parts of this investigation, in ways she didn’t fully understand yet. She’d have said she trusted them before. Right now, she wasn’t so sure.

“If we bring down Buzard, he leads us to the larger group—to the people he works for. An organization that thinks they run the world.” Kenna probably couldn’t fight them alone. “If we work together, we can bring them down.”

“Doctor Marcus Buzard doesn’t work for anyone.”

She frowned, partly aware of Jax circling the room and looking at everything. “What do you mean? TheDominatusrun the show here, like they run it everywhere. They kidnapped me in Colorado just a few months ago, and Buzard was there. He was working for them.”

“He doesn’t work for them here.”

“The whole reason I’m on his radar is because of them. Because my family dedicated their lives to taking them all down.” And doing so had nearly cost them everything. “Buzard knows about me because of them. It has to be why he did this to me.”

Three shrugged. “I only know what I know. He might be scared of them, but they don’t have a say in what he does here. This place—the whole operation in Arizona—is about what he wants.”

“And what is that?”

“I wish I knew. But not knowing is probably why I’m still alive.” Three turned away and walked to a wall, sliding back a panel that revealed a window. He stared out.

She needed him to keep explaining this to her. “Three?—”

Jax cut her off. “I heard something. Stay quiet for a second.”

A moment later, she heard it as well. “Sounds like a footstep.”

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