Page 69 of Now or Never
“He’s dead. Ramon was there.” Kenna set down her mug. “Sorry to state the obvious.”
“You’re right.” Jax shrugged. “I made some calls this morning and found out that the major general was at an extended retreat for a few weeks, on personal leave. Most people think he was in rehab, which is interesting enough for a high-level military figure that sincere effort was made to keep it quiet.”
“Is there rehab for if you’re dead?” Kenna knew it was ridiculous, but what about an evil secret society wasn’t?
“No, but if you’ve got a genetic match or someone willing to undergo plastic surgery to look like you, why not get a replacement when one of the versions is eliminated?”
She tapped her fork against the table, but Jolene didn’t like being disturbed, so she quit. “More like you send the disposable double out to do your dirty work, let him be the one who gets killed, and when you return to work later, it’s the real you. But why the weeks of rehab?”
“He got hurt?” Jax shrugged. “Or the double is the replacement, and he needed training.”
“What does Ramon think?”
Jax laid his fork down and took a sip of coffee. “He’s not happy to know the general is still out there. What he ran into was some pretty sick stuff.”
Kenna had visited Ramon in the hospital right after it happened, but wasn’t even sure that she’d believed then what she told him. Now she did, because she’d righted her faith on the foundation it had slipped from.
Jax continued, “Ramon wants a face off. He wants to find the evidence and confront the guy about his connection toDominatus.”
“Is the general—the real one or the replacement—the one trying to take out Petyr and the other contenders forImperatoris?” She didn’t like the idea of confronting anyone, and she didn’t want her family in danger. Her version of “nesting” was wanting everyone to get into a bunker and shut the door so they could all be safe.
Nope. That wasn’t how this day was going to go. Her fears weren’t going to dictate what happened today.
She said, “I vote we ask Petyr to confirm if the general might be the one trying to kill him. Find out what he has to say.”
Jax’s brow rose. “You have his number?”
“Can’t be that hard to get it.” She wanted to shrug off his question, but the guy was a political leader who believed he was her father. Kenna sighed. “Why can’t Stairns turn out to be secretly my biological dad? I’d even take Bruce right now.”
Jax’s expression softened. “Maybe all three men should submit to a DNA test. While we’re getting a sample from Petyr, we can ask about Major General Schnell.”
“It’s expedient. It’s pretty safe. I like it.” She shoved a bite of potato into her mouth, enjoying the flavors—and the fact her pregnancy nausea was a thing of the past.
But that just reminded her of what Jax had missed. The experiences they could’ve shared, good and bad, because Jax was the father of her child. And she would always know who her dad was.
He smiled. “I’ll run the plan by Ramon. See what he says.”
“Did he take a look at the guy currently pretending to be the general?”
“I’ll find that out as well. He’s been steering clear of that side of things, focusing on what Maizie sent over. Looking at structural plans for military bases and satellite images she’s managed to get.” Jax winced. “I don’t want to know how.”
Kenna’s mind seemed to have spiraled several steps ahead, to secret military bases and clandestine operations. “Maybe Bruce or Stairns could pretend to be a couple of those retired guys that were experimented on.”
Jax shook his head, processing it all. “I still don’t understand how they were old and didn’t look it, or what they could do. It’s unreal to think those people are walking around in the world.”
“Good thing the government isn’t interested in breeding super soldiers, or we’d be in trouble.”
Jax stared at her.
“Nah, nah. Don’t even think it. I don’t want to know.” Kenna clapped her hands over her ears. “Our baby isn’t one of them. They just wanted to know what she could do. They didn’t do anything to her, because I stabbed one of them when they tried, and Buzard told them to back off.”
Jax didn’t blink.
She lowered her hands. “What?”
“You protected our baby in the middle of that?”
“Wouldn’t you have? I wasn’t going to let them touch her!” She could have told him the rest of whatDominatushad wanted to do to her baby. The fact one of the medical personnel had been working on an incubator so that they could surgically remove her baby from her—womb intact—and keep her alive, experimenting on her until she was ready to be “born.” Nope. She wasn’t going to tell him that, or the other terrible things that ran through her nightmares like a horror movie she couldn’t forget.
