Page 89 of Tracking Safety

Jenna looked up from buttering some toast as Liam appeared in the kitchen doorway. He wore a collared shirt, and his hair was damp and combed flat.

Her heart squeezed. “You look very handsome.”

He glanced at her. For a second, Jenna thought he’d say nothing.

Then he tugged at his collar and muttered, “It’s itchy.”

“They always are.” She kept her voice light. “It’s a rule. Dress shirts have to itch.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but maybe it was the ghost of where one might someday be.

The action was gone as fast as it came, and he turned to find his shoes.

Liam wasn’t going to court with them this morning. It appeared he’d just decided to dress up anyway.

A few minutes later, the rest of the gang joined them downstairs, and Wes arrived at the house.

She knew before he stepped inside that he had an update. She saw it in the set of his jaw.

He paused in the kitchen and got right to business. His gaze went to Luke, then Jenna. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“This way.” Luke nodded toward the porch.

The three of them stepped outside.

“I told you I’d have the thread nailed down by today. I do. Most of it.” Wes looked at Jenna. “I wanted you to hear all of it as soon as possible.”

Jenna’s stomach tightened. She didn’t like the sound of that. “Okay.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out where a twelve-year-old WitSec placement sprang a leak. Somebody had to connect the woman who disappeared from Virginia to the woman the Barones were hunting. That somebody had to be close enough to this town to make the connection in the first place.”

Luke’s expression tightened. “You found whoever did this.”

“I found where the leak started.” Wes’s eyes moved to Luke and stayed there. “It started in prison with Richard Harding.”

The porch went silent.

Jenna watched the news as it hit Luke.

Richard.

The man who’d married Luke’s sister. The man who’d designed the farmhouse they were standing in and then murdered the woman it was built for. The man whose violence was the reason this place existed at all.

Something behind Luke’s eyes went still and dark.

“As you probably know, prison is a place full of people who trade information for protection and money,” Wes continued. “We believe that Richard ran his mouth about the King family. He said enough that another inmate—one connected with the Barones—put together Jenna’s disappearance with that of Ellie Barone. From there, the information must have gone up the chain.”

Jenna pressed a hand to her sternum. She’d never once imagined she might be discovered through the King family’s own heartache. Through the man who’d already taken so much from them.

“That’s how they found me?” She ran a hand through her hair. “Through Richard.”

“That’s what we believe,” Wes confirmed. “But Richard, obviously, is locked away in a cell. That explains how they found her. It doesn’t explain the phone. A man talking in a cell block can’t hand anyone a number the service scrubbed six months ago. That came from somewhere else. Somewhere I haven’t gotten to yet.”

“You’ll keep working on it?” Luke asked.

“I will,” Wes said. “And there’s also the fact that someone on the outside has been behind the incidents this week.”

Wes didn’t say the name. He didn’t have to.