Page 67 of Dust and Ashes

For her, it likely hadn’t. Maizie had still been captive when she was old enough to understand that it wasn’t just short periods of trauma or a one-time event that her mind needed to protect her from. It had been every day of her entire life up until just a few months ago. She didn’t need to be anywhere near anything like that again.

“Go with Stairns back to Colorado,” Kenna said. “Go home to the trailer and help me from there.”

Maizie glanced at her, the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Is that what you want? To get rid of me?”

Kenna shook her head. “I want you to be safe, and I want you to find peace.”

“Elizabeth said I’m not going to have peace unless I find it for myself. You can’t give it to me.”

Kenna said, “I want to.”

“I know.” Maizie sniffed. “That’s why I chose you.”

“I’m really glad you did.”

“You know, Stairns would cut off his arm if he thought it meant I could let go of some of this.”

Kenna nodded. “I know.”

She hadn’t made the choice to leave Maizie with him lightly. Not considering the history that she had with Stairns. But if she was going to move on from forgiving him for the way he’d ended her FBI career, then she had to keep trusting him. As it turned out, one of the best places where Maizie could’ve ended up was with Stairns and his wife, Elizabeth.

Kenna lifted two fingers and waved to Stairns. He and Ramon got back in the car, but neither asked if she and Maizie were good. They simply carried on like it was business as usual.

Stairns said, “So should we go check out that compound?”

“Sounds good to me.” Kenna needed to get out of the car and do something. Move. Sitting in here was beginning to heat up her body too much. Enough that she felt flushed and adjusted the vent to give her more air. She almost felt like she had a fever, but it was probably just all the stress, coupled with the aftereffects of the drug Kart had given her.

She glanced at Maizie and the teen looked over.

They shared her small smile, a tiny moment of solidarity. There was so much she wanted to do with and for the girl. Safe times Maizie could rest and focus on healing, and vacation adventures to create new memories. All of which meant Kenna would have to take a break from solving cases at some point. In order to not let too much time pass and risk never being able to share some peaceful moments of her own with the girl.

Stairns pulled into the compound, the car bumped over the fallen gate, and he sped down the road toward the main building. Half the buildings were rubble, parts of them still smoldering. The other half weren’t going to be habitable anytime soon. She doubted Kart had come here to hole up. More than likely he just needed to retrieve something from the location, and then he was gone.

It wasn’t lost on her that it would be some kind of payback to leave Navarro’s nephew dead in the middle of all this destruction. Doing that would send a clear message to the cartel leader as to how Kart felt about what happened here. The question was, after Kart delivered that blow whether he would come after Stairns for being the one to make the deal with Navarro in order to get Kenna back.

Stairns parked. “I’ll hang back with Maizie if the two of you want to go and look around. You know more about what is where in this place than we do.”

Kenna could have kissed him for that suggestion. There was nothing she wanted less than to give Maizie an up-close-and-personal view of the hidden parts of the compound. But she and Ramon would have to look through everything.

“Copy that,” Kenna said.

She and Ramon traipsed to a doorway still intact, though the door itself lay on the floor inside.

“What are we looking for—apart from Kart and Javier?”

“If he’s not here, it’s because he took something and left.” Ramon paused. “Or he used this location as a way to access somewhere else.”

Kenna turned to him in the dim light of the hall. She should have brought a flashlight. That one bare flickering bulb at the end of the hallway didn’t give her much of a view of his face, and the dark expression in his eyes. There had to be a generator still working somewhere.

Her stomach flipped. “What somewhere else? Where would he go?”

Ramon said nothing.

“What do you know about accessing other places from here?” Kenna asked. She had tangled with people who used underground tunnels, caves, and hallways carved out of the earth just a few months ago and had no desire to revisit anything like it.

“Only the rumors I’ve heard. It’s how I think some of the people have been going missing.” Ramon waved her on. “I’ll show you, but I only got a quick glimpse of the room once before I was discovered where I shouldn’t be.”

Her phone chimed. Kenna played the voice recording message from Stairns.

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