Jax said, “This is my residence, and you do not have permission to enter.”
Kenna bit her lip. She knocked again on the door while Maizie stood by her, worry in her features.
No answer.
Kenna tried the door latch, and it swung open toward her. Steam billowed out of the bathroom, revealing an empty shower. No Zeyla. Just a cell phone on the edge of the sink.
She’s gone.
Chapter Forty
“Ican’t believe she just left.”
Kenna bit her lip at Maizie’s words and looked out the windshield at the dark night sky, heavy with clouds that probably meant snow would be falling tonight. They’d talked to the cops for hours and eventually let them look through the RV. It wasn’t like there was anywhere inside that Zeyla might’ve been hiding, but it at least assuaged their curiosity to look.
Over the comms channel they had open, Jax said, “We should probably get out of town as well. It’s going to look suspicious, but I don’t want to be around when the cops start pointing fingers.”
Kenna wanted to finish this, to see for herself that Ellayna and her family really were safe. Then she’d feel all right about leaving town. “If this guy never shows, we can talk about packing up. I’ll call Preston, and he can give up the fight to get that software company to admit what they were doing.”
Given that her team had MSI messing with them, and someone who wasn’t Zeyla had murdered two people, it would be safer to leave. Preston was going to be another story.
She’d managed to reach him earlier but hadn’t had the chance to talk for long. He’d been in a meeting with peoplehe refused to identify, even though he told her they could put pressure on the company to admit Shawn had been right.
As if appealing to someone’s sense of decency was going to work in the world of cutthroat business? She had told him good luck, even though she didn’t believe in luck. She could’ve prayed for him to get a result, but even that would’ve been halfhearted.
Preston wanted it all to go public, which meant whoever was doing wrong had to admit the truth. She was mostly worried he’d come across Shawn and Marcus’s real killer and get himself in trouble, but the guy didn’t listen to her.
“If the feds or the police here have questions, we can give them Bear’s number,” Kenna said.
“Or the president’s.” Jax stood over at the far end of a parking lot under a streetlamp, so she could see his outline from here. The killer who’d been contracted to take Ellayna and kill her family was on his way.
Actually, he was hitting the point where he was late.
After hours of conversation with the police, Maizie and Jax realized they had a reply from the guy. In the end, they convinced him that Jax was a wealthy socialite with money to burn and a serious grudge against his business partner. He wanted the guy gone with no witnesses and no trace—no body left to be found.
Maybe the guy needed cash, because he’d agreed to meet when Jax insisted their agreement be made in person.
It wasn’t ideal, and they didn’t even know who this guy was. There hadn’t been time or a way to dig into his background. Even the bank account on the invoice MSI had sent them had been nothing but a dummy account where money landed and was transferred somewhere else within seconds. Wired to another country, somewhere with more lax financial laws, where records weren’t a necessity.
“Maze, did you make any progress tracing more of those accounts?”
In the back seat of their car, Maizie sighed aloud. “I have another fifteen, at least. It goes around and around in circles, is split up, transferred again, divided, and then it lands in an account in one large amount. Then it’s divided again and moved to multiple accounts.”
Jax said, “What about that forensic accountant you were working with a while back?”
“I sent what I have. I’m waiting for her to get back to me.”
Kenna watched her husband, noting he didn’t display any impatience. She would be pacing up and down. But when playing the character of a guy with way too much money, he’d opted to be cool as a cucumber.
She, on the other hand, wanted to yell at Zeyla. The woman had given them all the slip. Out the bathroom window. Or no one had noticed her slip into the bedroom, where she could have used the hatch in the floor that went through to the storage area underneath. It was supposed to be for security purposes.
The only thing she’d left behind was the phone—and on the screen, Kenna had found a message to her that hadn’t been sent.
I’ll miss you.
As if that made up for the fact that all of them would worry for the rest of their lives where she was. If she was okay.
Kenna scrubbed the tears off her cheeks and felt Maizie’s hand on her shoulder. She squeezed the young woman’s hand, not wanting Jax to be distracted by their emotions right now.
