Page 61 of Storm and Tempest
Jax nodded. “The RV.” He tapped the dash screen so it would direct Ramon back to Jax’s townhouse, since they were thirty minutes away in a different suburb of Phoenix.
The midday sun beat down on the windshield, and the window beside him radiated with warmth.
He shut his eyes against the glare when what he wanted to do was look at those pictures of Kenna again. It wasn’t going to help. In fact, it might make things worse to keep wondering what was happening to her. The implication of a photo of her in a hospital bed.
He wanted to pray, but the words wouldn’t come.
What could God possibly be doing through this? Jax thought he’d had the solution all figured out, relying on the Bureau to provide the resources to gain him success. Now he had to do the same with Kenna’s team—the people she considered family.
Jax had always thought that him not being an FBI agent wasn’t going to be the best version of himself. That would be the version with no boundaries, just his own integrity. He’d proven in high school—by lying to himself and everyone else and hiding the pills he’d been taking—that he lacked the honor it took to be someone people counted on. Fear had held him back from walking away from his job and joining Kenna on hers.
Fear, and the expectations others had always put on him to be a self-sufficient guy who took care of his family. But now that he’d lost what really counted, he wondered why he’d put so much stock in doing what he thought he “should.” It had taken losing Kenna to realize what really mattered, and it wasn’t being an FBI agent so he could feel good about himself.
Ramon pulled the car into the garage, beside the RV bay. Maizie jumped out and went ahead of him, into the RV. He set up the coffee pot, needing more than anything right now to feel close to her.
Jolene wandered down the linoleum from the bedroom, where Maizie sat on the edge of the bed, typing on her laptop. The cat wound herself around one of his ankles, between his feet and around the other leg, leaving cat hair on the ends of his pants.
Stuck in the blood on his pants.
Jax looked at his hands and realized they, too, were stained with blood from Samuel, and the operative he’d killed and searched. That, and the cut on the side of his forearm. He strode out of the RV and through the laundry room door into his house, then up the stairs and through the bedroom.
He didn’t look at the bed.
Jax stripped off and took a shower, the water extra hot. Trying to cleanse off the grime of everything happening right now so he could get some clarity.
The knife wound on the edge of his arm stung.
Blood dripped onto the tile between his feet and washed away down the drain. But in the end, he emerged from the shower the same man he’d been when he went in. The same guy who considered the FBI to be the height of integrity, even despite the actions of some agents. There were bad seeds in every organization, no matter how pure and upright it wasmeant to be. He was the same man he’d always been now that he was on suspension, working with mavericks to solve this case.
The addict.
The guy who’d beat the addiction to get clean and stayed that way so long as it was in his power to do so.
All of it was him, no matter what he did or said. Or the ways that he succeeded or failed. Jax would always be the person God had made uniquely to do the things He’d set before him.
To find Kenna—a woman who spent her life on saving others. To always be the one who showed up to save her when she needed it.
For better or worse.
Chapter Seventeen
Jax took his cup of coffee and sat across from Ramon, even though the little dinette in the RV wasn’t really big enough for two grown men. “What happened at the charter plane company?”
Ramon and Zeyla had been out getting intel, trying to find details of a flight that might have taken Kenna out of Arizona.
The wordoffshorerolled around in his mind. Samuel’s last word.
But what had the guy been trying to tell him? Maybe with all the information about financial companies, the way to find Kenna was through a bank account, following a money trail. Jax didn’t know how that could be true, but it was worth a try. He needed to run the idea past Maizie and see what she thought, but they were waiting for her to tell them what she’d come up with once she’d finished compiling everything.
Ramon glanced at Maizie, still on her computer, then said, “They have a hangar—or they had one—at that municipal airport. Someone took the sign down, probably the same person who cleared everything out and packed up.”
“They’re gone?”
Ramon nodded. “Empty hangar, empty ready room—even the fridge was bare. Cupboards and drawers open. We found a newspaper from a few months ago, just the sports section though, and a flyer for an event happening at the airport.” He sipped his coffee. “Nothing we can use.”
Jax wanted to believe they’d gained leads in the last day or so, but with this—and the fact they might not get anything from pictures of Kenna sent from an untraceable account—he might have to accept they had nothing else.
Ramon continued, “Spoke with the guys in the neighboring hangar, hobby fliers who hang out there when they’re not working and fly for fun. They said they never spoke to the outfit when they saw them—and it wasn’t often. Might amount to different schedules, or there might never have been much in that hangar. Except maybe a plane waiting to take Kenna away.”
