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The insurance she should have as Jax’s spouse didn’t kick in until ninety days after the wedding, so it hadn’t started yet.

With her kind of enemies, she hadn’t wanted a doctor where her records would be official, so she’d opted for a specific medical center.

One that had her on a rougher side of town in front of a rundown strip mall.

The store next door was empty, boarded up.

“I should rent an office. Hang a shingle.”

“Whatever that means.”

“Set up an office for Banbury Investigations. Like with a sign out front.”

“You have a website.”

“Okay, Two Thousands,” Kenna said, scared to even think about the year Maizie had been born. “But back in the nineteen hundreds , when we had to do things before the invention of the internet, we lived on a more…local level.”

“Sounds boring.”

Kenna parked the car but didn’t turn off the engine, so the air-conditioning continued to blow on her.

She drank some more iced coffee and watched traffic go by on the four-lane road.

A chain hotel sat on the far side. The strip mall housed her doctor’s office, which was a twenty-four-hour medical center that let people pay cash and use whatever name they wanted.

There was also a Russian grocery store, and beside that was a children’s consignment clothing boutique.

Maizie continued, “Unlike the dark secrets of that medical center.”

Kenna frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Your doctor? Nicola Santorini? She’s connected with the Mafia in Las Vegas.

I had to show Stairns so he could explain it all to me, but he put it together right away.

The Santinos are a huge crime family in Vegas, and she did a decent job keeping her life separate from them, but it’s never completely foolproof.

You can’t bury everything. Not when so much is online nowadays. ”

“And the medical center is part of it, or just Nicola?” If the doctor had changed her name and moved to Phoenix, maybe she wanted nothing to do with the rest of the “family.” Kenna knew the Santino family—or she had known one member.

At the time, she hadn’t even realized there were more of them.

What happened in Vegas had stayed there when Anthony Santino died on the same night Kenna killed the FBI Director.

She’d also killed the man who’d kept Maizie captive.

Maizie had escaped with them.

None of them had ever looked back.

“The medical center is funded by a foundation, and on the surface, it’s this philanthropic cause. Helping people who can’t afford treatment or insurance and who don’t qualify for help to get adequate medical care.”

“And below the surface?”

“The foundation is backed solely by the Santino crime family. They use it to launder money.”

Kenna blew out a breath. “Maybe Nicola has no idea.”

“Maybe she does good, and there’s no reason to rock the boat.”

“I guess I’m gonna find out.”

“Call me back after.”

“Sure thing, Maze.” Kenna climbed out of her car, bringing her cold coffee with her.

Heat hung in the air, surrounding her, making her want to seek out the nearest cold pool so she could soak away all the aches she had.

No longer just the injuries to the tendons and muscle in her forearms, this was deeper.

And bad enough that she barely even thought about her forearms now because her entire body made her want to curl up on the floor and do nothing. Take a nap. Maybe cry a little.

If this was what chronic illness felt like…it sucked .

Kenna needed to find out what was going on with her body.

Okay, fine. She needed to find out what Dominatus had done to her when they held her captive two months ago.

Smart money had been that they’d impregnated her with one of their genetically modified embryos.

Considering she was one of those herself, she couldn’t really hold it against the child if that happened.

But there had been nothing.

At least, not so far. Which made it more and more unlikely every day.

All the wild theories her mind wanted to come up with as to what they’d done to her raced through her thoughts. She could be patient zero in a deadly pandemic. A test subject for some new research project they had going on. Or she’d been genetically altered somehow.

Whatever the answer, it put her future with Jax in serious jeopardy.

When she figured out what they’d done to her—and who was responsible—heads were going to roll.

When she was two steps from the front door of the medical center, the window to her right shattered, and two people flew out in a tangle of limbs.

A plus-size woman in a pair of dusty overalls hit the ground in a spray of glass with Kenna’s associate Bruce on top of her.

The former CIA agent wrestled with the woman like he was fighting for his life.

Kenna reached toward the small of her back for her gun, but neither Bruce or that woman had a weapon. She didn’t draw hers. “Bruce.”

He glanced at her, holding the woman’s wrists with one hand, his forearm across her collarbones. “Kenna, good to see you.”

The woman wriggled one hand free and punched Bruce in the side of his head. He slumped over, and she shoved him off.

Kenna held up her hands. “Not so fast.”

The woman scrambled up, agile in a way that meant she was a serious threat.

Why hadn’t she brought a stun gun? “Let’s just take a sec and?—”

The woman ran at her, crazed and screaming.

Kenna had no time to do anything but turn and present her shoulder to the woman. She slammed into Kenna and nearly knocked her flat on her behind, but Kenna kept her feet planted. The woman’s cry cut off, and she clutched her chest, fell back, and hit the ground.

Out cold.