Page 24 of Storm and Tempest (Brand of Justice #13)
Staying at the FBI, trying to keep his job, had felt more like fighting the battle solo, without their backing.
He’d been on his own, or working with Maizie.
She was the one who’d been his ally this whole time, but with her being his responsibility, he couldn’t lean on her as an equal. Doing that wouldn’t be fair to her.
Now that he’d walked away from the FBI, he almost felt as if he had more support. Add the fact there had been more movement on the case in the past day than in weeks, he didn’t know if he should feel reassured or not.
Things seemed to be unraveling rather than progressing toward solving the case.
Ramon glanced over his shoulder. “Any way to track down Elliot?”
Jax met his gaze. “You think he knows more than he was letting on?”
Ramon shrugged.
Maizie looked up. “I have his laptop, so I can set up an alert. And if he logs onto any of his apps or accounts from another device, I’ll know about it. Do we need to find him?”
“He could be in danger,” Jax said. “But I’m not wasting time looking for him if he’s on the run, keeping a low profile.
” He winced, thinking of how Elliot could implicate Jax in crimes that would get him fired—if not put in jail.
But catching the guy and shutting him down just to keep the truth buried wasn’t the right course of action.
Ramon said, “Where to, Maze?”
“The RV?”
Jax nodded. “The RV.” He tapped the dash screen so it would direct Ramon back to Jax’s townhouse, since they were thirty minutes away in a different suburb of Phoenix.
The midday sun beat down on the windshield, and the window beside him radiated with warmth.
He shut his eyes against the glare when what he wanted to do was look at those pictures of Kenna again. It wasn’t going to help. In fact, it might make things worse to keep wondering what was happening to her. The implication of a photo of her in a hospital bed.
He wanted to pray, but the words wouldn’t come.
What could God possibly be doing through this? Jax thought he’d had the solution all figured out, relying on the Bureau to provide the resources to gain him success. Now he had to do the same with Kenna’s team—the people she considered family.
Jax had always thought that him not being an FBI agent wasn’t going to be the best version of himself.
That would be the version with no boundaries, just his own integrity.
He’d proven in high school—by lying to himself and everyone else and hiding the pills he’d been taking—that he lacked the honor it took to be someone people counted on.
Fear had held him back from walking away from his job and joining Kenna on hers.
Fear, and the expectations others had always put on him to be a self-sufficient guy who took care of his family.
But now that he’d lost what really counted, he wondered why he’d put so much stock in doing what he thought he “should.” It had taken losing Kenna to realize what really mattered, and it wasn’t being an FBI agent so he could feel good about himself.
Ramon pulled the car into the garage, beside the RV bay. Maizie jumped out and went ahead of him, into the RV. He set up the coffee pot, needing more than anything right now to feel close to her.
Jolene wandered down the linoleum from the bedroom, where Maizie sat on the edge of the bed, typing on her laptop. The cat wound herself around one of his ankles, between his feet and around the other leg, leaving cat hair on the ends of his pants.
Stuck in the blood on his pants.
Jax looked at his hands and realized they, too, were stained with blood from Samuel, and the operative he’d killed and searched. That, and the cut on the side of his forearm. He strode out of the RV and through the laundry room door into his house, then up the stairs and through the bedroom.
He didn’t look at the bed.
Jax stripped off and took a shower, the water extra hot. Trying to cleanse off the grime of everything happening right now so he could get some clarity.
The knife wound on the edge of his arm stung.
Blood dripped onto the tile between his feet and washed away down the drain.
But in the end, he emerged from the shower the same man he’d been when he went in.
The same guy who considered the FBI to be the height of integrity, even despite the actions of some agents.
There were bad seeds in every organization, no matter how pure and upright it was meant to be.
He was the same man he’d always been now that he was on suspension, working with mavericks to solve this case.
The addict.
The guy who’d beat the addiction to get clean and stayed that way so long as it was in his power to do so.
All of it was him, no matter what he did or said. Or the ways that he succeeded or failed. Jax would always be the person God had made uniquely to do the things He’d set before him.
To find Kenna—a woman who spent her life on saving others. To always be the one who showed up to save her when she needed it.
For better or worse.