Page 40 of One More Chance

If she didn’t take him down, who knew what might happen. He could take anyone. Kill without consequences and target whoever he wanted. If she did nothing, it would be at least partially her fault because she could’ve stopped it.

Her phone rang. Kenna put it on speaker. “Hey, Maze.”

“I got an answer on that phone number they gave you, but it isn’t one you’re going to like.”

Jax turned onto the ramp for the freeway, their destination twenty minutes away.

Kenna asked, “What is it?”

“The number comes back as registered to a pay phone in New York City. But the number was discontinued years ago, when the whole network was taken down.”

“Do they even have pay phones anymore?”

“All of them were taken down except for a few phone booths and some private phones. The system was dismantled. Who knows how they have access to one of the numbers, if it wasn’t just reassigned to a regular phone.”

“Access to government resources, or they know someone they can bribe that gave them the number.” Kenna had a few other ideas, but that was the gist of it. “They got it somehow, and apparently, it’s how we get ahold of them.”

“Maybe I should call. Introduce myself.”

Hopefully, she was joking. “Let’s leave bringing them on board with the team for a while yet. We don’t even know if we can trust them.”

“But they’re like you, right?”

“I have no idea, Maze.” No reason to discuss this anyway. Whether they were the same or different didn’t matter. She lived her life, and they’d chosen theirs. She probably wouldn’t be able to sway them from what seemed like the tenets they lived by.

Rules that had kept them alive for years.

“Anything on the address they’re sending us to?” Jax reached over and squeezed her knee.

“Only that it’s all over the police band. A pizza restaurant, some kind of franchise place. It burned down last night. The cops are there now because they found something, but no one has said what it is on the radio. Yet.”

“Thanks,” Kenna said. “We’re almost there.”

“Keep me posted. Anything else? Stairns just showed up with pizza.”

Maizie probably didn’t want to be on the phone when she shared her dinner with Kenna’s dog, Cabot, who lived with her in the Airstream. The dog whowasn’tsupposed to eat pizza.

“Nope. Thanks, Maze.” Kenna hung up. “A pay phone? Seems like an old-school way for people to find you.”

“Maybe the number goes nowhere. Or it’s a prank number they give out when they don’t want someone to be able to contact them.”

Kenna let out a sigh. Up ahead, she spotted several unmarked police cars, a coroner’s van, a fire truck, and afire chief’s SUV, along with another vehicle with Fire Marshal written on the side.

“This looks interesting.” Jax pulled over a distance from the incident scene on a suburb street with a strip mall on one side and a row of apartment buildings on the other. Two lanes of traffic had been reduced to one due to all the emergency vehicles. A couple of police officers stood in the center directing traffic.

The middle of the strip mall housed a wide restaurant with two stories, or it had. Now it was a burned-out shell that hadn’t spread to the neighboring storefronts, but she figured they had significant smoke damage. Enough that everything had been shut down.

Jax approached, digging out his credentials. He introduced himself and explained that Kenna was his consultant.

When the cop looked at her, she said, “Sarge.”

Jax tried not to react, but she knew he wanted to. It wasn’t like she knew every cop in Phoenix.

The sergeant said, “Hernandez.”

She nodded. “I remember. How is Ms. Fleming?”

“How should I know?” He motioned over his shoulder at the burned-out building. “Is this your doing?”

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