Page 36 of Storm and Tempest

Andrette sniffed. “Thank you.”

“Anything else?” She’d called him, after all.

“I looked at Hadley’s calendar. He has a meeting on his schedule for lunch. It’s part of why he’s so antsy. He wants reports from everyone on what cases they’re working and the progress they’ve made before he goes out.”

“Who is the meeting with?”

“I don’t know, but the calendar appointment saysD. That’s all. JustD.”

D, as inDominatus? A long shot, but it could be the break they’d been looking for.

Jax said, “Thanks.”

“I hope you find her.”

The line went dead.

Ramon met him at the car. “What now?”

“We need to track down Amara.” Jax opened the driver’s side door. “She’s the one who ran Elliot off the road.”

Chapter Eleven

Ramon 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 thatsenator. 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.”