“He’s out.” Jax shifted. “Back up because the ambulance is here.”
“We need the whole story as soon as he wakes up, but right now, we need to find his office.”
“I have a better idea.” Jax stood. “You and I follow the ambulance to the hospital. Zeyla can go to the office with Ryson.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Of course, they’d had to find the office first. Ryson and a contingent of cops had gone, with Zeyla in tow. Even though there was a chance Ellayna, her mother, and her brother were there, Kenna had done what Jax asked and went to the hospital instead. So the pregnant woman could wait close to doctors and emergency medical care.
She tapped her heel on the floor, bouncing her knee up and down. Even the waiting room smelled like despair. Did she really want to have her baby in a place like this?
Jax sat beside her, texting Maizie about everything. Getting live updates from the police and Zeyla as to what they’d found at Wallace Lofton’s office. “Okay.” He glanced at her. “They aren’t there. Whatisthere is a collection of recordings, tapes he used to get the interview with Ellayna and some others on record.”
“Tapes?” She didn’t quit bouncing her knee even though it was probably annoying everyone around her.
The hospital intercom buzzed, and a Doctor Young was asked to report to surgery.
“Literal tapes. The tiny ones you put in a handheld voice recorder.” Jax scanned her, head to toe but didn’t say anythingabout what he discerned. “Guess he thought himself some kind of investigative reporter.”
“Pretty sure they use apps for those now.”
“But an analog tape stuffed in a drawer is a lot harder to hack than an electronic file.” Jax’s expression softened. “Which is irritating Maizie to no end. She thinks he did all the production on a computer, and the only thing he did online was upload the file to the podcasting site so it released. She used the desktop computer, which Zeyla said was ancient, to get into his online accounts, and apparently, there are several weeks’ worth of episodes already cued up, ready to release.”
“Did they shut it down?”
He nodded.
“Where is Ellayna?”
A tendon in his jaw flexed. “I’m sorry, but we don’t know.”
An elderly woman came down the aisle and took a seat in front of them, pulling knitting from her purse. The needles started to clack together. “How are you folks?”
Jax said, “Good, thank you. You?”
“Oh, I’m hanging in there. Waiting for the hubs to get done with his dialysis.” She glanced between them. “You know, if you want that baby to come, you should pace up and down the halls. You see the pregnant women doing that all the time.”
“She can stay where she is for now.” Kenna patted her baby bump. “As long as she needs to be there.”
The woman frowned, rather than agreeing that was a good idea. Kenna didn’t really need to get into her personal life with this woman.
She shifted on the seat and put her bent knee on Jax’s thigh. She whispered to him, “I asked where they are, and he said his office. Why were they not there?”
“Maybe he thought you were asking about the tapes?”
“He’d better wake up soon.”
Jax hesitated but caught himself. “I nearly asked if you wanted coffee.”
“So mean.”
He put his arm around her. “You love hot chocolate and apple cider. Some tea.”
“Very few kinds of tea. Basically, just black with milk.”
She felt him chuckle, and he kissed the side of her head. His phone buzzed, and he looked at it, immediately tensing. “Maizie says Ellayna’s phone just came back on. It’s giving us a GPS location, but she could be within half a mile of there, or it could be spoofed.” The phone buzzed again. “The signal is bouncing around. It’s in a completely different place now.”
While he told her all that, Kenna fumbled with her coat on the seat beside her, tugging it out from under the shoes of the kid curled up asleep on the seat beyond it. She pulled out her phone and dialed Ellayna’s number.
