Page 5 of Storm and Tempest (Brand of Justice #13)
Chapter Four
J ax left his phone in the car. He didn’t want to see any more missed calls from Ramon. Until Kenna was found, he wasn’t sure he had anything else to say to the guy. After all, they’d made themselves clear to each other last night.
He’d gone home and slept in his room because he wanted to be closer to Maizie in case she needed to talk about what happened.
She’d been upset, but that upset led to her sleeping in Kenna’s RV in the garage.
And when he’d gone over to try and talk to her, he’d overheard her talking—probably to Elizabeth.
He’d given her space and left the house before she was up this morning.
Heat shimmered up from the asphalt even though it was still early. He walked the path flanked by rows of neatly planted cypress trees that were all fifteen feet and immaculately manicured. The lawn looked like a golf course, dotted with headstones. One of them would read Doctor Marcus Buzard .
Jax tugged the folded paper from his inside breast pocket and knocked on the door of a white square single-story building with peeling paint on the stone exterior. He let himself in and found an older man shuffling papers on a desk. “Sir?”
On the street behind him, several cars screeched to a stop, parking behind his car, going fast but not running lights and sirens. He shut the door just as FBI agents hopped out. At least half a dozen who apparently didn’t have anything better to do than come here and find out what he was up to.
Jax cleared his throat. “Sir?”
The guy grabbed a stack of files and a radio, then straightened. He flinched seeing Jax standing there. “I didn’t…” He reached for the back of his ear. “Didn’t turn on my hearing aids this morning. Didn’t even hear you come in.”
“Sorry if I startled you. Are you the manager here?”
“Manager, groundskeeper…pest control—you name it.”
He shifted his jacket so the man would be able to see the badge on his belt. “I’m Special Agent Oliver Jaxton. This is a warrant for the exhumation of a body.” He handed over the paper.
The older man frowned at his document, then looked at the window. “People usually bring equipment. You gonna dig this person up by yourself?”
The door opened behind him, and several agents came in, Farlan at the lead.
“Did you bring a shovel?” Jax asked.
“Sir…” Farlan began. Maybe he had no idea what to say. “Can we step outside, Jax?”
Rather than get into a disagreement with his subordinate, Jax turned to the groundskeeper. “Can you show me where to find plot AC28?”
The older guy wandered to a map on the wall. “AC.” He ran his finger up the map of the grounds, then across a horizontal line. “Twenty-eight is by the fountain, couple rows back to the north.”
“Thank you,” Jax said. “You can keep that copy of the paperwork.” He headed for the door and stepped outside.
Special Agent Herron broke off her conversation with one of the other agents and came over.
He told her, “We’re going to need something to dig with.”
Right then, Farlan come out of the small building behind him, but Jax wasn’t about to be waylaid by him any more than by her.
Herron lifted her chin. “We’re going to talk about this before we do something rash.”
“That tone might work with your kids, or maybe even your husband,” Jax said, “but I’m your boss.”
“Assistant Director in Charge Hadley arrived at the office this morning. He wants to speak to you as soon as you can get there.” Herron folded her arms. “And he’s not happy you’re making him wait.”
“There’s a dangerous man walking around who is supposed to be dead.” Jax wasn’t going to back down. “I’m looking at that grave.”
He strode in the right direction, and the team followed him.
“Don’t you need a shovel or something?” Farlan asked.
“I’m here to look,” Jax said. “We are getting this thing exhumed, but that can happen this afternoon. We need to secure the scene first.”
Farlan snorted. “You think someone’s gonna mess with it?”
“If they were going to, it’s probably already done,” Jax replied.
“But there could be clues.” Maybe he sounded like a lunatic.
But if that’s what got him Kenna back, then what did he care?
“I want to examine the grave for indications anyone has been visiting. Or something that was left behind. Nothing is out of the realm of possibility right now.”
He wouldn’t rule out Dominatus leaving a surprise for him—likely a nasty one.
They were trying to undermine his search for Kenna.
Jax couldn’t explain how she had been at that bar, or why she would be involved in a trafficking ring. At least not any more than he could understand the video of Kenna with Buzard, looking like they were involved in a romantic relationship.
Their enemy wanted the world to believe Kenna had run off with another man. There would certainly be nothing to investigate if that was the case. Jax would look like the guy who had lost his wife and couldn’t let her go.
He would be discredited—pitied. The guy who refused to see the truth.
Their enemy didn’t need to try and kill them. They certainly had the means to end his life and all of Maizie’s friends’ lives without firing a single shot. Dominatus could destroy them all so easily.
That was why Jax had to figure out what they were up to.
Get ahead of them for once, instead of feeling constantly as if his enemy was one step ahead of him.
That would be the only way they could deal a blow, let alone take down Dominatus.
Jax would settle for being a legitimate threat to them—and finding Kenna in the process.
He counted rows to figure out where he should go. But as he neared the stretch of grass, it became apparent he was getting nowhere.
From ten feet away, he pointed. “Looks like someone beat us to it.”
The dirt had been piled to one side, and a gaping hole with no casket in it had been dug in front of the headstone that read Marcus Buzard.
“So…was he ever here or not?” Farlan squeezed the back of his neck.
“I don’t imagine they buried nothing, but I guess it’s possible there was just an empty casket. Or it was full of rocks. If there was something here, then someone dug it up.”
“I mean, I see that.” Farlan shook his head. “Grave robbers?”
Special Agent Herron sighed, her hands on her hips. “Someone didn’t want us to find Doctor Buzard.”
The man had been dead. So someone had stolen his body, then?
“I’m surprised they allowed him to be buried in the first place.” Jax shrugged. “Given who he was, I figured they’d have stolen the body before now or had him cremated to get rid of any evidence.”
“Who are these people?” Farlan shook his head. “I mean, I came in late to this game, but this Buzard guy had a facility full of test subjects, and people he coerced to working with him on his grand plan or whatever. But I feel like I need to get up to speed.”
“Buzard went rogue from a bigger organization,” Jax said.
“I figured they would have buried him and everything connected to him.” Including people, but everyone that worked for Buzard had taken some kind of vow of silence, going to prison without uttering one word.
All of them—and there were at least thirty.
Jax had tried talking to a few of them, but still none of them would say anything.
“Seemed more like the bigger organization washed their hands of the whole incident.”
The only connection he could see were those men from the retirement home, known only by numbers.
They’d been registered at the home with clearly fake names, and Maizie had been scouring military service records, trying to find out who they were.
It seemed more like they’d been erased from existence.
Something that was not going to happen to Kenna.
“Boss.”
He turned to Special Agent Herron, and she motioned across the grass.
The groundskeeper came over with a couple of agents, not looking so happy about finding a hole in the ground where there should be a grave. “Well, now,” he said, scratching his chin. “That’s not good, is it?”
Jax said, “Do you have any kind of surveillance system in the grounds of the cemetery?”
He scratched his jaw. “Usually, sure. But these folks came over last night and told me we were having a whole system upgrade. Knocked the whole thing out for a while and couldn’t get it back up. So it’s currently down.”
“What folks?”
“Older guy, Hispanic guy, and a blonde. Thick ponytail sticking out the back of her ball cap. She was good at what she did. All those ones and zeros racing across the screen.”
Jax’s stomach clenched. The agents here would realize that was Maizie. “If some of our techs could take a look at your system, we would appreciate it if you give us access. Just in case the footage is recoverable.” He wandered off, heading for his car.
If there had been something to find, Kenna’s team would have found it.
After all, they were the ones who had beaten him here to do exactly what Jax had intended this morning.
Bruce, Ramon, and Maizie. None of them had told him what they were doing, or what they’d discovered if they had found something.
Jax stopped by his car and fired off a text, asking them what they did with Buzard’s body. Then he climbed in, ignoring the stares of his agents. If his boss wanted a meeting, then Jax wasn’t going to make him wait any longer.
He drove to the office, thinking how Kenna would always want to stop for coffee.
He’d stopped making a pot in the morning when it was only him who drank it.
Then Maizie had shown up at the house because Stairns was in to California so he could be a bodyguard for Jax’s sister and her family. Just in case they were targets.
He didn’t know whose idea it was that he have her company, but it was better than her being in Colorado by herself.
Jax wanted to know why Maizie let the others talk her into bringing down the surveillance system so they could steal Buzard’s body.