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Chapter One

K enna Banbury had gone into some dark places in her life, searching for the lost and forgotten. Solving cases. Catching bad guys. But there weren’t many places worse than corporate America. Wearing a pantsuit and low heels. She had her hair in braids and wore thick-rimmed glasses to somewhat disguise herself.

She stood at the front of the conference room, where the employees had filed in. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure you’re all eager to get back to work.”

A rumble of chuckles spread across the crowd. Maybe fifteen people, in rows of six chairs, all faced her.

“For now, there are donuts on the side table, and we have coffee. Just in case you’d like a treat.”

Half the room got up.

In her earpiece, Maizie said, “Set your phone somewhere closer to the west wall.”

Her tech support guru, nearly an adult but not quite, had been raised as the captive of a deviant man with the power to keep her hidden from the world. Now that she was free, Maizie was thriving. Partly because she was in the van outside, being protected by Ramon, so that she was “part of the team” for this mission, out in the field working with them. Trying to take down an international organization, or at least the US arm of it. From what Maizie had figured out, the organization had funneled money through this finance company, laundering illegally obtained funds and making themselves look legitimate.

Maizie said, “You need to be nearer, or I won’t be able to establish a connection.”

Kenna got her phone from the table behind her, where she’d set it because the pockets in these pants might fit a sticky note but not much else. She moved it to another table against the wall, which held flyers and leaflets about respect, kindness, and the supposed reason they were here—sexual harassment.

As she walked back to the front of the room, Stairns crossed from the far wall to meet her in the middle. Her former boss from the FBI—a lifetime ago now—unofficially worked for her. The retiree looked about as happy to be back in a suit as she was.

“Please take your seats.” Kenna smiled, keeping her posture open so she’d come across as being here to help. Not to hack their network from the inside and trace the money the “company” laundered through this place.

“Thank you for coming, even if you didn’t have much choice.” She scanned the crowd, pinpointing the ones she’d be able to make eye contact with so that she could feel as if she was connecting to someone and not talking to blank expressions or bowed heads because they were on their phones. “But this is a topic I’m passionate about as a survivor.”

She wasn’t going to lie, so she couldn’t tell them an untrue story about sexual assault. But Kenna had been the victim more times than she liked. That much would be true. And she had been touched in the wrong situation in ways she didn’t want by someone who had ill intent. Up close and personal with a monster, a killer. Even if she didn’t consider it sexual assault. Sometimes, it was just the job.

Where it didn’t need to be the job was here.

“Thank you for listening to me. It’s part of my healing journey that I get to share my experiences with you here today, and while I’m not going to go into detail that might make some of you uncomfortable, I can say this. Any of us can find ourselves, at any time, in a situation that makes us nervous or scared. Or one that we realize too late we want out of.”

One of the young guys in the crowd glanced at the donuts, like he wanted to go get one. Slender. Probably five-foot-six tops, and maybe mid-twenties but only barely.

The woman beside him, taller at the shoulder, reached over. Did she pinch or poke him?

The young man winced and returned his attention to the front. He realized right away that Kenna had seen that.

This woman was bold, doing that in a situation like this. Or she was so accustomed to it she barely even noticed when she did something to…what? Keep him in line?

“Have any of you been in a situation like that?”

The whole thing had happened in a second, and now the young man didn’t raise his hand. He sat there, kowtowed into silence. Kenna might be wrong or reading more into it than there was, but her instincts didn’t usually fail her. These days, those instincts were wrapped in the kind of discernment Paul urged the Philippians to have.

A few people in the room raised their hands, and she smiled warmly at them. “Whether we’re prepared to admit it in front of others or not, the pain—or the fear—can still be real. Often, it’s stronger when we keep it to ourselves. When we speak what happened aloud, the thing loses its power. It loses its hold on us.”

Before they concluded she was going to ask them to share their darkest experiences, Kenna said, “Let’s all stand and push the chairs to the wall. Maybe stack them. Let’s do a little self-defense scenario, and hopefully, you’ll go away with some tools to protect yourself.”

While everyone stacked the chairs, and a couple of the men got another donut, Kenna tried not to be distracted by the young man. After all, he could be on a diet, and the woman simply had a habit-breaking way to hold him to his promise not to eat donuts. It might not be a relationship or a power imbalance between the two of them.

She turned to her papers on the table at the front and whispered, “Are you in yet?”

Stairns gave orders behind her, directing people to pair up and spread out so they wouldn’t swing their arms and whack each other.

Maizie said, “It’s not close enough. I’m only getting an intermittent signal, but I’m going to try and get into their system with this. Standby.”

Kenna turned back to the group. “All right, everyone has their partner?” She glanced around, clocking more than she let on. The young man had paired up with the woman who’d been sitting beside him.

Kenna walked over to Stairns in the center. “The biggest threat you face is the one you don’t see coming.”

Stairns whipped out his arm and grabbed the back of her neck, forcing her head forward. Her body bowed under the pressure behind her neck.

Kenna reached back and grabbed his shoulder. Then she kicked out with her left leg but didn’t make contact. She held it up, touching it to the back of both of Stairns’s knees. His loose grip on the back of her head, mostly just the weight of his hand now, lessened, and she straightened enough to look at the group. “What happens if I swipe his legs?”

Someone said, “He falls back.”

“But so do you,” a woman at the back said.

Kenna nodded. “It’s possible he could take me down with him. If we both fall back, but it was my action that got us there, I’ll have an extra split second to think while he’s surprised. So there’s a chance I can get away.”

A chance that had saved her life before.

She straightened and tipped her head for Stairns to step closer to her.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” He moved in front of her.

Kenna grinned and several people chuckled. She put her arm around his neck, feeling the usual twinge of pain in her forearms. She’d been working on physical therapy the last few months, giving her injuries time to heal so she could lift more than her cell phone and open all doors, not just the ones that weren’t heavy to pull on.

She wrapped her arm farther around his neck from behind and grabbed her own wrist, holding loosely to everything. “I can trap my opponent, and he’ll never see my face. Once he’s immobilized, I could do whatever I want. This is something we’re going to practice because I’d like for you to know how to get out of a choke hold. It’s important that, in the heat of the moment, you don’t panic. So if we practice these things, you might, for a second, be able to have a cool head.”

She looked at the group over Stairns’ shoulder. “One partner get the other into a loose hold. I don’t want anyone getting hurt or passing out. But here’s your first tactic. The second you realize your partner is moving to choke you, I need you to do two things. First, tuck your chin as far as you can before the hold hits. Second, get your stance strong.”

Stairns said, “If they can get you on the ground, it’s harder to get out of the hold. You need to stay standing.” He shifted. “Plant one foot slightly back and keep your knees soft.”

The pairs each got into their stances. Most of the pairs were two men or two women. Considering the size difference between some of them, that was good. Interestingly, the young man was the victim, and his female friend was the attacker.

Kenna said, “Okay, all of you turn so you can see me.”

The young man winced, turned by the force of the woman’s hold.

“Make sure you’re not holding tightly on your choke. The goal is not to hurt your partner.”

The young man’s face remained impassive, maybe even resigned. She’d seen that look before on the faces of victims who didn’t believe they had any power to change a situation. It might be a stretch, and she might be projecting based on the kind of people she usually associated with, but if there was even a chance this guy needed help, she wanted to help him.

“If they’re close enough to choke you, you’re close enough to hit back. Anyone have any ideas of things you can do?”

“Jab their eye with your thumb!”

“Elbow their side.”

“Stomp on their foot.”

Kenna said, “Anything you can think of. If your airway is cut off, you have ten seconds before you’re going to pass out. That means you need to work fast. First, you have to decide that you’re not going to be a victim. Right here, right now.”

She had an idea.

Kenna let go of Stairns and started to walk around the room. “A choke hold is a threat to your life. So, what are you going to do? I want all of you who are in the position of the victim to say this out loud.”

She took a breath. “I’m not going to be a victim.”

A couple of people murmured it.

“Louder!”

Her friend Ramon, tucked away in the van, chuckled in her ear, but he didn’t know what was going on in this room. He thought she was only pretending.

A few of the “victims” repeated her statement. She went to stand in front of the young man. “Let me hear you say it.”

His jaw flexed, determination on his face. “I’m not going to be a victim.”

“You don’t have to be.” And so he didn’t think she was singling him out, Kenna looked around the room. “Any situation you’re in, no matter what it is, you can make that choice. You can say, ‘I’m not going to be the victim.’”

She glanced over in time to see him push the woman’s arms away and step out of her hold. The woman frowned, but Kenna didn’t give her the chance to start a conversation.

She clapped. “Okay, time to switch places!”

Now that he’d chosen to not be the victim, it was time for the power balance to shift in his favor. “Again, we’re not trying to hurt the other person. We’re working on tools you can use to get yourself out of situations you don’t want to be in.”

Stairns took over, walking them through when a person has grabbed them by the wrists and immobilized them. A few quick ways to break a hold and get free.

Kenna walked back over to the table and said quietly. “Update.”

Ramon, whose only function in the van was to protect Maizie, said, “She’s pulling information in pieces. We might not know if we have everything, but we’ll have…a lot?” He paused. “Enough, at least.”

Maizie had to be furiously typing away to communicate through Ramon without speaking up herself. But then, she said, “If you can get to the server room and plug in, that’ll get us the best result. It’s the only way to know if we have everything.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Stairns had everyone in their pairs, jerking their wrists out of the other person’s hold. The young man looked a lot more determined. The woman with him didn’t look so happy. She had to be at least forty, so if they were in a relationship, there was already a power imbalance with her being older than him. A lot of people made that work, but sometimes, one party subjugated the other. To what extent, Kenna couldn’t know from only an hour or so of observation.

“Let’s everyone take a break. We’ve made some great progress.” She walked into the center of the room. “I’ve had too much coffee, so I’ll be looking for the bathroom. We’ll meet back in ten.”

Hopefully, by then, the seminar would be over.

Instead of coming back and continuing this farce, they would leave with the information Maizie had gained from their system.

She retrieved her phone and took it with her, wandering through the halls. “I need some help.”

“I’ll pull up schematics,” Ramon said in her earpiece.

She smiled at a couple of people and found a hall with less traffic.

“You’re close,” he said. “Second door on the left, toward the end. That’s their server room.”

Kenna checked that no one was watching her and ducked into the room, lined with floor-to-ceiling racks, all humming. Lights blinking.

“Now we’re talking,” Maizie said. “The signal is way stronger.”

“How long do you need? I could leave my phone and come back for it.”

“Only a few minutes,” Maizie said.

Ramon added, “Hang tight and then you guys can leave that place.”

“It’s just an office.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said. “Corporate offices give me the hives.”

Kenna smiled. “Makes me wanna tell you that you have to wear a tie to my wedding.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

She glanced down at the ring on her left hand. Jax had proposed in Greece months ago, under the warm Crete sun. The trip where everything had changed for her. Kenna had learned so much about where she came from and who her parents really were.

She’d even met her grandfather, though due to his illness, he’d passed away a couple of months ago. The old man’s guardian had given Kenna a book of her father’s that was never published. The Constantine Initiative. Constantine was the family name the old man had passed down to Kenna’s mother and the two women who were her aunts—one of whom was actually technically her mother.

She’d been trying to wrap her head around it ever since.

Amara was her aunt, but she’d married Malcom Banbury, and they’d been determined to raise Kenna together as her parents. She’d considered Amara her mother. The woman had been shot when Kenna was a toddler.

Or so everyone believed.

This was no time to get distracted thinking about that unpublished novel right now or the questions it had given her when she read it. Namely, where her mother was. If she was alive.

Why hadn’t she made contact?

Kenna shook off the thoughts and paced around the server room.

“Okay, got it,” Maizie said.

“I’ll pack up.” That was Stairns.

Ramon said, “There’s an exit door at the end of the hall, Kenna.”

She went to the door. “Meet you downstairs.” Kenna slowly eased the door open and looked at the end of the hall.

The young man stood there in heated conversation with the woman. “No.” He tugged his arm from her grasp. “Don’t touch me.”

She bristled with aggression, every muscle in her body tight.

Kenna didn’t like the look of it.

“It’s over.” The young man walked off.

Kenna said a quick prayer for him, that he’d be safe and make even more changes to his life that would bring him peace. That the woman wouldn’t retaliate.

She stepped out.

The woman whirled around only to find Kenna in the hall. “This is all your fault.”

Kenna faced her. “Excuse me?”

“Putting ideas in his head!”

“About what? Not being a victim?” She was going to play dumb until this woman incriminated herself. “About having a choice to not be in a situation?”

The woman blustered, stuttering but not actually saying anything.

“Why would he feel the need to break it off with you after hearing that? Is there something your manager needs to know about your relationship?”

People started to gather at the end of the hall, witnessing the intense conversation between Kenna and this woman.

Kenna lifted her chin.

The other woman came at her, those long talon nails bared. Kenna planted her foot, turned her upper body, and slammed her shoulder into the woman. She yelped, knocked back. Kenna hadn’t even laid a hand on her. She just blocked the woman’s attempt to…what? Claw her eyes out?

The other woman stumbled back.

“Don’t touch me.” Kenna stood her ground. “You don’t have my permission. I’m not going to be another one of your victims.”

Someone behind the woman started to applaud. Then others joined in, most of whom had been in the seminar.

Before the woman could turn to see the result of her actions, Kenna said, “We’re done here.”

She walked to the exit and pushed her way through to the stairs. At the last second, she spotted the young man at the end of the hall, barely visible by the corner of the wall.

She thought she saw him mouth, Thank you . But she didn’t stick around long enough to find out. “Stairns, we’re leaving.”

He responded over comms. “On my way.”

In her earpiece, Ramon said, “Can’t help yourself, can you?”

Kenna jogged down the concrete stairwell. “Just be ready to go when I get down there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”