Jax was determined to continue their tactic of keeping their heads down. It didn’t keep Kenna out of danger. He’d been trying to get her to lay low in the RV more, not that it was a foolproof way to keep her safe. But then she had come to his and Zeyla’s rescue at that shopping mall. Driving right into the middle of an active shooter situation.
“She terrifies me.”
“The president?”
Jax chuckled, shaking his head. “My wife.”
Ryson barked a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder. “You married her.”
“How do you do it? The world is terrifying, and yet you leave your house. You go to work and trust that nothing will happen to them while you’re on shift.”
“It’s why I do the work. I want the world they live in to be safe.”
“But you aren’t there to protect them.”
Ryson said, “You want to be her twenty-four seven bodyguard?”
“For her and the baby.”
“Eventually, you have to let them out of your sight, bro.”
Jax nodded. “I know that. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m living with it. But it still feels like the fear is eating me up from the inside.”
“That’s because you’re trying to carry it. You’re trying to turn the fear into something else or make it less. The fact that you have it in you in the first place is…” Ryson blew out a breath. “Do you know how many fathers I meet on this job who don’t give two hoots about their kids? Who couldn’t possibly care any less that something might happen to their children? That they might ever be unsafe, unprotected, and get hurt?”
“I’m not like them, I get it.”
“And that—just that—is anamazingthing. It’s not rare. It’s a miracle. Humans are selfish. We don’t do the right thing. We fail. You’re over here tearing yourself apart trying to figure out how to allow nothing to happen to them.”
“But I’m gonna fail. I’m gonna choose wrong, and they’ll get hurt.”
Ryson said, “Yeah, you will at some point. They will get hurt. You can’t stop it, though you can maybe mitigate some of the fallout. Or the worst could happen, and you might not survive. The point is whether you’re going to waste the time you have worrying about keeping them safe or whether you are going tolive. That’s why the Bible says to choose life.”
Jax had chosen worry and fear a whole lot lately. Probably too much.
Ryson clapped him on the shoulder again. “You’ve got to let it go and trust God has it all in His hands, or you’ll wake up in twenty years and realize you wasted your life instead of enjoying what you have now.”
Ryson’s radio crackled. “All clear, Lieutenant. You and Mr. Jaxton can come in.”
“Time to go live in the moment.” Jax set off. They headed along the sidewalk, past the stump of a tree that had been cutdown but not dug up. The roots ran under the sidewalk, pushing it up so that the surface was uneven.
The front door was open. An FBI agent stood there on guard with his weapon angled down at a forty-five. He nodded as they passed.
Inside the house, it seemed as if every light had been turned on. The yellow glow cast a weird filter over everything, and with the warmth indoors, it created a kind of haze in the air.
Ryson led him through the house, going first because he was the cop here. Jax was only a civilian. They didn’t have to include him, but out of courtesy for the guy who used to work in the FBI office here—and what they knew of Kenna’s story—they’d allowed him access. The bottom line was that these special agents knew him personally, not just what the news had said about him in the past few years.
The lead agent here was Dires, an ex-NFL football player who’d gone straight to Quantico from a Super Bowl loss a few years ago. He was arguably a better agent than quarterback, but not by much. The guy towered over everyone in height and was wider than most in his shoulders. He turned to see them come in. “Gentlemen, Rich has some things he’d like to say.”
The guy had been allowed to sit in a wooden chair pulled over from his dining table—a folded card table that didn’t match anything else. Even the two chairs were mismatched. Jax looked around and spotted a laptop on the recliner in the living room.
He had thinning brown hair, nothing on top but a few greasy strands. A T-shirt that was too big for his frame, and stained tan pants.
Jax said, “Go ahead.”
Rich blinked, opening his mouth and smacking his lips together like he had a bad taste in his mouth. To the FBI’s credit, he didn’t look like he’d been roughed up. Just surprised. “What do you want to know?”
Dires said, “We already know you were trying to groom Ellayna Feathers.”
