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Grinning, Kane washed up at the sink. “I happen to be partial to Pop-Tarts, but when it’s cold like this I need protein. I’m thinking smoked ham, cheese and bell pepper omelets, and you can make the toast.” He pulled the ingredients from the refrigerator. “You like?”
“You amaze me.” Jenna opened the bread and dropped four slices into the toaster.
Kane beat the eggs. “Don’t cook the toast yet. Slice up the ham for me and open the bag of shredded cheese.”
“I saw a pile of this in the freezer.” She frowned as she pulled it from the fridge. “It says it’s made in the UK. What’s wrong with American cheese?”
Pouring the eggs into a pan with melted butter, Kane smiled at her. “I had it on my travels. It’s called English cheddar and the taste is quite strong. I like it, is all.”
“Hmm, you have very expensive tastes.” Jenna sliced the ham into strips. “Your own special blend of coffee, wine imported from New Zealand and now English cheese.”
Kane laughed. “Well, everything else is one hundred percent American.”
The phones both chimed at the same time. Kane raised his eyebrows. “You’d better get it. I’ll finish the omelets.”
“Hi, Jo, we’re just having breakfast. What’s up?” Jenna put the phone on speaker and took plates from the kitchen shelf.
“We thought we’d catch you before you left for the office.”Jo yawned.“It’s been a crazy few days. We arrived home from Blackwater late yesterday. We had to wait for a break in the weather and then hightailed it in here this morning at five when the alarms in the building were activated.”She cleared her throat.“You know that Bobby Kalo lives in the building, right?”
“Yeah, you have mentioned it.” Jenna recalled the IT whiz kid inducted by the FBI and pushed down the toast. “So, what was the problem?”
“He went to the bathroom and one of the doors malfunctioned and he was trapped inside the passageway. No phone, nothing, so he had to smash the scanner beside one of the doors to set off the alarm.”It was Carter’s voice coming through the speaker.“We have override codes if anything happens, but he was blue with cold when we got here. When the building goes into lockdown, it closes down everything including the heating.”
Kane loaded the plates and saved the toast from burning. “Is he okay?”
“He’s cold, is all.”Carter chuckled.“He’s giving me the stink eye now. I figure having me rescue him has bruised his ego.”He cleared his throat.“This isn’t why we called.”
After pouring fresh coffee Kane sat beside Jenna at the table and listened with interest about the missing family in Blackwater. He sighed and told them about their missing woman. “So, we’re facing the same mystery. Vanished without a trace. We’re hoping if we get the warrant this morning, we’ll be able to trace her phone. Maybe she’s holed up with a guy or something?”
“I’d be worried about the little boy.” Jenna looked at him. “It’s so cold and not wearing a coat. That sounds like an abduction to me. Did you ask Wolfe to do a forensic sweep?”
“Yeah.”Jo’s chair scraped.“He searched for latent DNA as far as I’m aware. There’s really nothing at all in the house. Like Carter said, it’s as if they just up and left.”
Kane swallowed a forkful of omelet and shrugged. “We have frozen footprints going nowhere. They go from the grass to the blacktop and vanish. Unless we’re having an influx of alien abductions, I don’t have a clue.”
“Have you hunted down everything you can about the family?” Jenna sipped her coffee, holding a piece of buttered toast in the other hand. “It’s not unusual for people involved in crime syndicates to go missing.”
“Yeah, Bobby is doing background checks and we’re going to speak to family members if we can find any.”Carter’s voice carried from across the room and Kane could hear him stirring his coffee and tapping the spoon on the rim of the cup.“I’m wondering if they were in WITSEC and have been discovered, likely kidnapped and murdered. We can put in a query but there’s no chance we’ll get a reply. They don’t give out info. If Kalo tries to hack their files, he’ll end up in the state pen.”He sighed.“You know when you have the gut feeling it’s homicide? I had that the second I walked into the house. Typical professional abduction, clean and fast.”
“Let’s hope there’s no connection between your case and ours.” Jenna glanced at Kane. “Two cases where people just vanish in connecting counties is more than a coincidence.”
Allowing the two cases to filter into his mind, Kane shrugged. “Maybe we’ll know more later when we’ve hunted down Maisy’s phone. Keep in touch. Your case is intriguing. What’s the new sheriff’s name in Blackwater? He called you in early when these people had just gone missing. That seems unusual.”
“The new guy is Dirk Nolan.”Jo sounded amused.“He’s unsociable. I’m not sure why people voted for him. I hope he’ll be good at his job or we’ll be getting calls from him every time someone’s steer goes missing.”
“Maybe not.”Carter chuckled.“He asked me for a list of things he could contact us for if he needed assistance and I didn’t mention cattle rustling.”He sighed.“Okay, we better let you get at it. I wish we had Aunt Betty’s Café here. Our local diner doesn’t open until eight. We didn’t have time to stop to eat this morning.”
Kane smiled. “Catch you later.” He looked at Jenna. “What do you make of that?”
“Complicated.” She pushed both hands through her hair and sighed. “No weapons in the house or signs of them. Seems to me these folks were sitting ducks, but why were they targeted? If they can get to the bottom of that, well then, they’ll solve the case. Seems to me we both have the same problem. We don’t have any evidence and missing people.” She stood, collected the plates and smiled at him. “Great omelet, by the way, and I didn’t burn the toast. It’s going to be a good day.”
NINE
They arrived at the office to find both deputies’ vehicles and Wolfe’s parked out front. As Jenna slid out of the Beast, the wind pushed its way down her neck and up her sleeves. Trying to avoid the icy blacktop, she edged around the door and leaned against the hood. The heat from the engine was a nice balm on her cold extremities. She inhaled the crisp morning air and took in the spectacular view. From the top of the mountain to almost halfway down the peaks and the forest had a thick coating of snow. A pale blue hue descended the slopes as thick bands of cloud rushed by. It was bitterly cold and trying to avoid the sheets of black ice on the highway into town had been a nightmare. Salt spreaders were out in force, but she expected her phone to be ringing nonstop with accident reports. She turned and her stomach sank as she stared at Wolfe’s white truck. If Wolfe was here this early, he’d found something or someone.
“What’s wrong?” Kane lifted Duke from the back seat and came to her side. “Cold?” He pulled her into his arms in a bear hug.
Jenna snuggled into him. Kane was always warm, as if he had his own personal furnace tucked inside his shirt. “Cold, yes. I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t cold in this weather. That’s not the problem. Everyone is here. Something nasty has happened to Maisy Jones and part of me wants to turn back around and go home. Sitting in front of the fire drinking hot chocolate or snuggling in bed watching TV sounds like much more fun.”
