“Leave it to me. I’ll make sure they’re okay.”
“All right. Thanks, Ryson. I appreciate it.” She was going to let Jax and Zeyla heal from their injuries, while she made a case. One that local law enforcement in Utah or Montana could use to bring charges against the accomplice to a child’s death. Someone she’d missed during her investigation. “I’ve got plenty to do.”
“Me, too. If I can get this baby to nap on his own,” he said. “How is everything else?”
“I need Valentina to tell me how she deals with you being at work, potentially in dangerous situations, and worrying you might not come home.”
“I don’t walk a beat anymore, Kenna. Guess why.”
“Because of her and the kids,” she said. “That’s why you took the lieutenant’s exam?”
“Sure is.”
“So that you could work a safer job.”
“And come home at the end of my shift,” he said. “The risk is still there. But I’m not on the streets. I work at a desk, for the most part. Sure, I used to do SWAT and patrol. Plenty of our officers in those roles have kids. But it’s not for everyone, and Valentina needed the peace of mind that I was doing what I could to stay safe.”
“So you shifted your duties.”
“Comes with a bigger paycheck, which helps. But giving up patrol was a sacrifice. I loved the job.”
“You’re a good man, Javier Ryson. She’s a blessed woman, and your kids have the best kind of father.”
“Tell that to me in twenty years when I’m bailing this kid out of jail.”
Kenna chuckled. “Maybe we’ll have to introduce him to my daughter. See if we can give him a reason to settle down.”
“Oh, boy. Now there’s an idea.” He chuckled softly. “Gotta go.”
“Love you guys.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The call ended.
Chapter Thirteen
Kenna sat with her head back on the recliner, earbuds in. Not quite asleep but not all the way awake either. It was too early in the morning to be fully awake.
Ellayna’s voice drifted through her earbuds. “I remember it was really cold.”
She sounded young, but not like the child she’d been years ago when Kenna rescued her. This was a preteen who had seen far too much and understood the horror in the world better than most adults—because she’d stared it in the face.
“He told me to call him Ricky. He wasn’t nice, and it was really cold.”
The podcaster said, “And then Kenna Banbury came?”
Steven didn’t cut her off before she began to describe what the Seventh Day Killer had done in the days before he planned to kill her. But it was close. Making Kenna wonder if they’d discussed what they’d be talking about, that Steven didn’t want Ellayna to get too descriptive about her trauma.
At least he had that. This wasn’t about gratuitous information for the sake of downloads and ratings. It seemed this really was about the case.
“I thought she was a ghost,” Ellayna said. “Or an angel.” There was a moment of quiet, then she continued, “First, I was alone, and then she was there. She told me that Mommy sent her, but I wasn’t supposed to go with strangers.” She exhaled across the line. “I told my therapist that because it doesn’t make sense. I went with Ricky, but when Kenna showed up, I didn’t think I could go with her.”
“How did she convince you?”
“She said to me, ‘Mommy said to tell you that Bubby loves you,’” Ellayna said. “That’s how I knew she was telling the truth.”
Kenna sniffed back the moisture gathering in her sinuses. She couldn’t let Ellayna’s story get to her, but becoming a mother had messed with her hormones and expanded the capacity of her heart in ways she hadn’t expected. It seemed like she felt so much that the organ was about to burst out of her chest. Gross analogy, but fitting.
She didn’t want to feel this much. But the alternative would be to live as a robot with no feelings whatsoever.
