Page 13 of Storm and Tempest (Brand of Justice #13)

Chapter Eleven

R amon pocketed his phone and turned to Jax. “There are no John Does at any hospitals within a hundred-mile radius who match Elliot’s description. Same with the local morgue.”

“So he’s not dead, or in a coma and unidentified.” Although, with Amara’s skills, she could have hidden him in such a way that all Ramon’s work just now would be moot and the guy was in a hospital under a fake name. “She has a lot to answer for.”

Jax made a call from his cell in the phone holder on the dash. When it connected, he put it on speaker. “Bruce, where’s Amara?” He gripped the wheel, doing eighty on the highway back to Phoenix.

His phone lit up. “How should I know?”

“Why not use your contacts to find her?” Jax replied. “Because she knows more than she’s saying.”

Ramon huffed. “You think?”

Focused on the road, Jax didn’t see the expression on Ramon’s face. Why did Ramon need to cut into his conversation with Bruce? Jax shook his head. “What?”

“Of course she’s hiding stuff,” Ramon said. “She’s connected. Out, but in. Fighting them. Getting targeted. Captured by that senator. Escaping. She and Zeyla could’ve made a deal at any time, and it’s why they’re both still alive.”

Jax didn’t like the sound of that. “It’s sloppy that she let me see the damage on her car. She parked so it faced anyone who looked in that direction. That wasn’t a mistake. I don’t think she makes mistakes.”

“Amara wanted you to make the connection,” Bruce said. “She brought you the file.”

Jax looked in his rearview at Bruce’s car behind them.

The search of the airport had been a bust. Every building had been empty, and only a couple of guys with a hobby plane in one hangar were there to let them in a gate and answer questions.

Of course, they knew nothing, since they hadn’t even been at the airport on the night Jax and his friends were asking about.

Jax said, “We’re being played.”

“Again, of course ,” Ramon insisted on saying. “We’re all pawns. All of us. That’s all Kenna has ever been to them. We try to fight, but how are we supposed to go up against people like this?”

“So you’re not onboard with taking them down?” Jax glanced over for a second.

“Once Kenna is back…it’s up to you guys.” Ramon shifted in his seat. “But my vote will be to disappear. At least as far as they’re concerned. We never bother them, and they never bother us.”

Jax gaped. “You want to make a deal with them.”

Bruce said, “I tried. Look where it got me.”

“You want a life, don’t you?” Ramon asked them both. “I say live and let live. It’s the only way we’re gonna survive.”

Everything in Jax wanted to find Kenna and just disappear.

Build a life with her that included fulfilling careers for both of them, kids, and a peaceful life.

Whatever that might look like. “She would never be happy until there’s justice.

You think she would rest if she knew Dominatus was out there hurting people? ”

Ramon just sighed.

Jax continued, “Until we find Amara and Zeyla, we should go back to Phoenix and double back on exposing the mole in the Bureau. Whoever is their handler, or feeds them information, we need to talk to that person. They have to know how to find her.”

“For the sake of your precious justice?” Ramon’s tone cut across the interior of the car like a knife.

Jax wanted to give the guy a long speech about Kenna and the way she got things done. Instead, he asked rhetorically, “You think she’d let corruption in the FBI go unchecked?”

“She’d be first in line to bring that stuff into the light,” Ramon admitted. “Expose it.”

“Let’s do it, because it’s what she would do.”

“Agreed.”

“Pull into that gas station.” Ramon turned. “Bruce?”

“What are you going to do?” Bruce asked him.

It was like listening to shorthand, but Jax figured the quickest way to an answer was to do as Ramon had asked.

Bruce pulled off the highway and into the parking lot behind him.

“Find Amara,” Ramon said. “While you guys clean house at the FBI.”

Sounded like he didn’t want anything to do with the Bureau. And considering he’d been an agent burned and discredited by his handler, Jax didn’t really blame him. “How are you going to find Amara?”

Ramon shoved the door open. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call if I get anywhere.”

Bruce got out of his car, and the two men shook hands. Ramon got into Bruce’s car, and Bruce got into the passenger side of Jax’s.

Ramon peeled out of the lot faster than necessary.

Jax followed, heading toward Phoenix. “Maybe he’s the one who needs a bodyguard.”

“Do you think Kenna would?—”

“Fine. Use my logic against me.” He’d won a debate with Ramon with the same tactic, and Bruce had been listening. No, Kenna would not let corruption in the Bureau gone unchecked.

Bruce chuckled.

Jax wasn’t quite as amused. “He’s a big boy. Or expendable. I’m the one who needs a bodyguard. Got it.” He nodded, hitting the gas like Ramon had because he could—not because he had anything to prove.

Bruce shook his head. “He’s going to check on Maizie first. Make sure she’s good. That’s the deal.”

Jax hadn’t known about that deal. “How will he find Amara?”

“Not sure it’s her he’s gonna find.”

Jax frowned. “Zeyla?”

Bruce shrugged.

“I thought he was friends with some reporter who got an anonymous video.” Just thinking about that made his stomach turn, but this was a conversation about Ramon and the revolving door of women who seemed to come and go from his life. “And before that it was Forrest Crosby.”

“We’re all looking for something.”

“Even you?”

“Life never works out the way we think.”

“Kenna told me a while back that you had a moment with her mother.” Jax glanced over. “Things didn’t work out?”

“She’s not the kind of woman you pin down. But I guess that’s what makes it exciting.”

“And the lawyers at that firm?”

Bruce sighed. “Figured you’d get around to interrogating me. You know you could’ve called anytime the past two months. Just asked.”

“Sorry.” He navigated through downtown to the restaurant Andrette had sent him from Hadley’s calendar. “I should’ve worked closer with you guys.”

“Hasn’t been easy for any of us. You don’t wanna believe one person is the glue that holds all the others together, but some people are just like that.”

“You all became a family.” Because of Kenna.

“We needed it.”

Jax nodded. “So did I.” He found a break in the line of cars at the curb and pulled into a space.

“And it was the Bureau you found,” Bruce said. “But sometimes life surprises you, and you realize it’s time to make a different choice.”

“The reason I’m an agent is more complicated than that. It wasn’t just the first thing that came along. Being an agent has meant everything to me.” Because Special Agent Oliver Jaxton was the man he’d always thought he should be—the man his father could be proud of.

“Long as it’s not the only thing you are. Otherwise, when it gets taken away you have nothing left. You wind up rebuilding your life, like Kenna did.” Bruce glanced over. “She told me her story. Is that what you’re gonna be?”

“You think we won’t find her.” Jax gripped the wheel, squeezing it to get some of the tension out, not liking where this conversation was going.

“I want you to survive either way. To not lose yourself. She wouldn’t want that.” Bruce ran his fists down the knees of his tan jeans.

“No, I don’t suppose she would want that.”

Bruce let him think on that, and Jax drove in silence—his thoughts full of what Bruce had said, his heart aching for his wife.

Everything they were doing…all of it felt so much like wasting time. Spinning their wheels and never getting anywhere. Constantly believing this next thing they did would be the step that unlocked everything. That eventually they’d happen upon the answer.

Jax was more worried about who they would all become while wrestling with the question of whether Kenna was alive or dead. Wondering if they would find her or spend the rest of their lives looking. Each of them could so easily fall back into who they used to be.

He’d been made new by Jesus a long time ago. But right now, even that felt tenuous. As if he only had a weak grip on who he was in Christ.

The rest of them weren’t believers as far as he knew. Jax should take some time to tell them the story of why he’d chosen to believe. They could decide for themselves what they wanted to do with the information.

“Where’s our guy?” Bruce motioned out the windshield at the restaurant on the other side of the street.

“On the patio, the second umbrella from the right.” They even had cooling units out there, under the umbrellas, so people could enjoy their lunch alfresco.

Jax left the engine running for the sake of the air-conditioning, since it was over a hundred degrees outside right now.

Kenna would’ve hated it even if she hadn’t complained all that much.

She’d moved here so they could make a life together.

Happily ever after wasn’t the time to get vocal about complaints, but it was a time to make the best of things and work through problems together.

He’d been planning to take her somewhere with snow over the winter, and they both knew they weren’t going to live in Arizona forever. With a powerful enemy in the world, they hadn’t made many plans for the future.

Now he wanted to have those conversations, but she wasn’t here. Talk about having kids. Move somewhere they could raise children in peace. He could even see them being the home base for a team of investigators who worked for Kenna. People like Bruce and Ramon, even Maizie.

It sounded like a good life.

“Waiting for someone.” Bruce shifted in his seat, getting antsy. “I could get closer.”

Jax nearly laughed that the two men were so different yet similar in a lot of ways. “Ramon wanted to do the same thing. He wound up getting thrown out the back door of a cop bar.”

Bruce chuckled. “He has all the fun.”