Page 74 of Now or Never
Ramon stared at the screen. “Maizie can’t dig into it because they’ll know we’re onto them.”
On the screen, Jax told the receptionist that Kenna Banbury was there for her appointment. Which only made her wonder if that ruse was even going to work. After all, it wasn’t like she’d go see a doctor under her real name. WasDominatusor whoever the target was right now actually going to fall for this?
Jax and Zeyla went to sit in the waiting area.
She looked at Ramon. “I want to know if there’s a connection between Simon Newton and the other army guy we know who was killed in action. Mitch Caudelle. And Carl Allerton.”
Ramon lifted his gaze from the laptop to look at her. “You think there’s a connection?”
“It happened around the same time. Maybe they were deployed together?” Kenna shrugged. “Simon might’ve killed Mitch and faked his own death, or the whole group was declared dead and Major General Schnell recruited his own hit squad.”
“You think Mitch is alive as well?”
“I have no idea,” Kenna said. “But it’s worth figuring out.”
“I’ll have Stairns dig into it. He still has some military connections he can ask.” Ramon typed rapidly on the keyboard.
“It’s been a long time since he served.” Was he really going to be able to get them information? Though, maybe that was better than Maizie trying to hack secure government servers that were also possibly controlled byDominatus.
Ramon shrugged. “He wants something to do so he can feel involved.”
On her laptop, a nurse walked Zeyla and Jax through a doorway into a long hall and had Zeyla record her weight before she took them to a room. Kenna tuned out the blood pressure reading and the initial questions about how things were going, and what the reason for their visit was.
She did want to get an ultrasound. Who didn’t need the reassurance that everything was all right? But she regularly felt the baby kicking around, and she felt fine. Keeping active, sleeping well, eating nutritious food, and drinking plenty of water counted for a whole lot in the vein of healthy living. There were always factors that couldn’t be accounted for, but she’d just never had that many health problems. The few times they’d taken her blood pressure on the platform, during her captivity, it had gone from being on the low end to being normal, not even the usual higher reading that pregnancy brought. Or the raised pressure that would result from being kidnapped and subject to experiments.
Maybe it was a function of her birth and her connection to theDominatusbreeding program that gave her the blessing of good health. But she wasn’t going to thank them for it.
“If you want to see a doctor and get checked out for real,” Ramon said, “your mom can make that happen.”
“She isn’t my mom.”
“Your aunt. Whatever. Amara is determined to be this baby’s grandma. Might as well take her on as your mom. Unless you have a better offer?”
“There’s a whole lot of water under that bridge.” Apparently, the water ran through a storage unit she hadn’t known existed that was full of baby stuff. “She’s still part of my life.”
Ramon stretched his arms above his head. “You don’t get to turn this back on me and tell me to go find a family, because I’m working on taking my own advice. But I don’t think you should discount the people around you. They care about you.”
“I know that.” She sipped from her can and watched Zeyla pace the small doctor’s office room from the vantage point of Jax’s lapel camera. “I’m not ruling it out.”
“You’re also not letting them in.”
“I’ve done a lot of work to deal with what happened. Most of it in the last week. Give me a second to get my footing back on the right track.”
“She’s here for you.”
Kenna glanced at him. “In the sense that she’s not actually here, right?”
“You know Amara. She’s a behind-the-scenes person.” Ramon smiled. “I wanna see Zeyla being an aunty, though. Because that’s gonna be hilarious.”
“I know who to call if someone needs to pace up and down with the baby in the small hours of the morning.”
Ramon chuckled. “She has a good heart. She’s just never lived a life where she babysat, or had friends who have siblings,or ever had a mother in the traditional sense. Amara made sure she was alive, and in return got another foot soldier for her war. Once the fight is over, they can both learn how to be family in the sense you and I know.”
“Do we?” Kenna shrugged. “I have no idea what I’m doing. What I am doing, I’m probably doing wrong.”
“Says who?”
“Someone. Somewhere,” Kenna said. “But it’s my life, and I get to live it how I want.”
