“I’ll get a chance to say good night to her once she’s less groggy, but it will be tomorrow before she can have any other visitors. The surgery went well. She told the doctor she’d be back to her usual jogging in three weeks,” I told them.

  “Huh,” Gabriel said. “Hey, I meant to ask earlier and forgot. Did you call and tell Elle, Nyleena, or your brother-in-law that Myrna was shot?”

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Nope, never once thought about it.”

  “Well, we’re going to wait for a situational update on your mom before we leave. You can call them now while you wait to get in to see her,” he said. I nodded. Melina hugged me. Melina seemed to force Ivan to hug me, which was way more awkward than my hug with Melina. Nadine and Zeke told me they’d see me at home and everyone but the SCTU left the waiting room. I called Nyleena, then Elle, and finally the Grantchesters and let them all know about Mom and her condition. They all said they would be up tomorrow to visit her, and I hung up.

  “I hope Nadine and Zeke don’t get home and find Badger dead. That would really upset Mom. Maybe we shouldn’t have left all of them home alone,” I said. I texted Zeke the number for the emergency vet hospital I used in case it was needed for Badger when they got home. Zeke replied that it was under control and he doubted it would be necessary. I stood up, walked around the room, and then flopped back down into a chair.

  “Are you okay?” Fiona asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You’ve been weird the last 40 hours or so. Not like your normal self.”

  “I am fine,” I said. “Maybe. Hell, I do not know. I have felt weird for the last 40 hours or so. I got my first hormone shot at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night. I didn’t notice a difference that night, but I did late yesterday and I feel it more today. Twice today I have thought I understood why Kenzie suffered postpartum psychosis after being pregnant.”

  “Oh,” Xavier said. “Are you journaling about it as I asked?”

  “Sure,” I said. I had forgotten about it until this exact moment and had nothing written yet, but I could have it done by tomorrow morning. The treatment called for me to get one shot a week and take a pill every day. I was hoping that as we moved further away from the first shot, the side effects would decrease. Xavier got up and went to speak with the nurse. A few minutes later, a phlebotomist showed up with a mobile blood-drawing kit. She and Xavier talked for several minutes, and then the band was wrapped around my arm and a vial of blood was taken. She packed up her gear and headed off with my blood.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “I want an early hormone reading,” Xavier answered. “Maybe the pills and shots are too much.”

  “Maybe.” I nodded. I was exhausted and I wanted to go home and go to bed. Then I remembered Nadine and Zeke were at my house with my dog. And their dogs. And their bobcats. Maybe I’d be better off in a hotel. When I had agreed to this arrangement, my mom was home to take care of guest and pet needs. I’d sleep terrible tonight and I knew it. There would be too many new sounds between the dogs, bobcats, and people.

  Sixteen

  I awoke to the smell of coffee brewing. My audiobook was still playing on my phone in the bed next to me. I’d had to give in and put in the Bluetooth ear buds designed for sleeping to fall asleep. I’d eventually turned on Pride and Prejudice because I loved the dynamics of Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship on all facets. It was messy and complicated like real life. Downstairs, Zeke was cooking bacon and something else in my kitchen while coffee brewed in Mom’s coffeemaker. Nadine was outside with the dogs. I walked past him to grab a cup of coffee. I’d spent all my life detesting the bitterness of coffee, despite its heavenly smell. Living with Mom, I had discovered if I used flavored dairy creamer and no sugar, I could choke down a cup now and again. To this end, there was a carafe in my fridge of homemade dairy creamer whipped up by Trevor. It was a mix of French vanilla, hazelnut, and something I couldn’t identify in Trevor’s special not exactly cream or half and half dairy solution. I poured about half a cup and then filled it with the creamer.

  “You need a shower and I imagine your wife does as well,” I told Zeke as I walked back past him to my dining room.

  “Okay,” he said, looking at me strangely. “Do you want anything for breakfast?”

  “Just caffeine,” I replied. “You and your wife broke in the spare bed. I can smell it on you, which means I will be able to smell it even stronger on her. I don’t care that you had sex in the spare room last night. You can bone every night you’re here if you want; I only ask that you shower by morning, as it makes me feel weird to have to smell it.”

  “Oh, yeah, huh. I’d never thought of that. That would be weird. As soon as I finish cooking, I will head to the shower. Nadine is just throwing the ball for the dogs; I’ll go tell her to shower first.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I kept my mug of coffee and headed to the SCTU office. I still hadn’t watched the video Alex captured from Mom’s camera the day before. I was unsure I wanted to. The henchman had survived his injuries, but the bullet had lodged in his spine between his shoulder blades, causing paralysis of the legs.

  The office was full of people, which was unusual. Besides SCTU members, the two FAUs had returned, as well as a couple of men I remembered from the Brogdon shooting. Lucas motioned for me to follow him.

  “The task force is going to ask you if you believe your mom went there to kill Brogdon,” he whispered, pulling me near my office. “But, as you know from the video, she didn’t take any weapons.”

  “I haven’t watched it,” I admitted to him.

  “Oh, well, you will,” Lucas said. “Gabriel’s setting up a show-and-tell in the conference room for the task force, with the assistance of Peter West and Harry Burns. Apparently, the task force requested permission to investigate you and the Daniels family in relation to the shooting. This is meant to put all of it to bed.”

  “Investigate me for what?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Coffee? You should definitely get a soda before it begins; I am supposed to disarm you,” Lucas said. I set down the mug and unbuckled my utility belt. I handed it to Lucas. Lucas looked at it for a moment and then handed me the stun gun off it. I smiled that he had specifically chosen the stun gun and not the souped-up Taser.

  “Is this so I can stun gun myself when I want to throttle someone?” I asked.

  “I figured you’d be more apt to do that than wear a shock collar,” Lucas replied. I nodded in agreement and went to the small breakroom where I kept Pepsi products. I grabbed a bottle of cold Mtn Dew. Since losing my gallbladder to a stab wound, I hadn’t been able to drink dark-colored sodas and had switched to Mountain Dew because I didn’t have teeth to worry about. I finished off my coffee and put the mug in the sink upside down to be washed and taken home later. Twenty minutes later, we were all herded into the conference room.

  “Marshal Cain, before we start, you have yet to give your statement to the task force,” Captain Jones said. I considered telling him to take a long walk off a cliff but refrained. Instead, I was seated, and Peter West sat down next to me.

  “As a member of the governing board of the SCTU, I am acting as Marshal Cain’s representative today,” Peter said.

  “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” Jones asked.

  “How so?” Peter asked.

  “You knew Marshal Cain before she was a marshal, didn’t you? Aren’t you in fact related to Marshal Malachi Blake?”

  “Yes, to both of those things. I was not friends with Marshal Cain then nor are we friends now. I have acted as her representative on previous occasions. However, if you insist, I can get her an attorney from the Federal Prosecutor’s office instead, which is her right as a member of the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit. If I didn’t believe Marshal Cain was willing to discuss the matter of her mother’s dealings with Yuri Brogdon, I would actually not be here. I would be getting a federal judge to squash your request to speak to her at all. Personally, I think this entire thing is ridiculous. Marshal Cain was with two other US marshals who have vouched for being in a different part of town when Yuri Brogdon, a known criminal, was killed. Furthermore, Marshal Cain’s mother was injured during her encounter with Brogdon. She solidly defended herself against two men who not only wished to cause her bodily harm but did it. The fact that Myrna Clachan is a government-trained special agent capable of defending herself even now that she is elderly does not seem like a criminal matter.”

  “We just want Marshal Cain’s account of when and how she found out that her mother might be going to see Yuri Brogdon, since she beat nearly every other officer in Kansas City to the scene,” Jones said.

  “I learned of it within minutes of my mother leaving my house yesterday,” I told them. “We were wrapping up a discussion with a possible suspect in the family annihilator killings, and by we I mean Marshal Eli Holmes and Marshal Murphy whose first name I have forgotten. As I handed the emaciated dog of Judd Keller, our suspect, over to animal control, I got a text from Nadine Daniels, who is temporarily lodging with me while this killer is on the loose because I live in a safer neighborhood than she does. The text told me to call her ASAP. I did so and she told me my mother had overheard her and Zeke discuss the issue of Valentina Zeitzev-Marsden and Yuri Brogdon. As you know, earlier this year, Tom Marsden and Valentina Zeitzev-Marsden filed for divorce. She was targeted by the Anonymous Killer as a result of the divorce proceedings. Upon becoming involved in the case, we learned Tom Marsden was involved with Yuri Brogdon. At that point, Nadine Daniels informed me that Tom Marsden had offered his two daughters to Brogdon in exchange for releasing some of his debt to the Ukrainians and that Brogdon had attempted to kidnap the youngest one. Daniels’ Security is now providing armed guards to both girls at all times. Upon hearing this from Nadine and Zeke, my mom grabbed her purse and left the house, according to Nadine. My mom used to do kidnap and ransom operations for the CIA, she has some experience with mob bosses and human traffickers. I do not know my mom’s intent, but she is not one to back down from a criminal who is willing to hurt children. I suspect the nature of her visit was to embarrass Brogdon in front of real customers, as well as scope out the place he calls his headquarters. Once there, I don’t know what happened. When I arrived, there were two patrol cars on scene. One of them was using the loudspeaker on his car to try to contact anyone inside. At that point, I called the restaurant and my mom but got no answer. Marshal Murphy reminded me he was a trained hostage negotiator and I put him in charge of the loudspeaker. He attempted to contact someone several times using the loudspeaker, and then I took over. We continued to get no response so when Detective Ivan Daniels with the Kansas Metro Police Department showed up, I asked him to accompany me into the building and I turned on my body cam, the footage of which you should have.”

  “Do you believe your mom went there to kill him?”

  “No,” I lied. “My mom doesn’t talk often about her days as a rescue agent for the CIA, but I know she was well trained because the CIA does not pay kidnappers, even to return children. No doubt my mother believed that should the Marsden children go missing, it would be to everyone’s advantage that she understood the layout of Brogdon’s primary business. After my mother married and started having children, she didn’t go with teams to recover children, but she still helped plan the operations. If Brogdon kidnapped the Marsden children, it would have been fairly easy for my mother, even at her age, to plan and/or advise on a rescue mission led by police or Daniels’ Security.”

  “So, when Marshal Murphy overheard you say your mom was going to kill Brogdon he was mistaken?”

  “Probably not. I don’t remember exactly what I said or when or to whom. I may have said it, but it was a figure of speech. We were talking about an eight-year-old and a 14-year-old girl. There is no way that didn’t have sinister traumatic associations for my family as a whole and my mother and I in particular.”

  “Is it possible you said it to Nadine Daniels?” a second guy asked. I couldn’t read uniforms for rank and didn’t know his as a result. Nor had anyone introduced him to me.

  “If I said it, I was most certainly talking to Nadine Daniels on the phone,” I said. “Nadine has personal knowledge of my own kidnapping by a child-molesting serial killer at the age of eight. Her mother and my mother are good friends, so her and her mom may know things about it from my own mother that I don’t know, like how my mother felt or what my mother did for those days I was missing.”

  “You don’t deny saying it then?” the second guy asked and I looked at Peter West. Peter sat forward.

  “She’s already answered that,” Peter said. “Furthermore, you are aware that Marshal Cain has, in the course of duty, sustained minor memory damage and it is why she requested a body camera to wear on the job years ago. It is impossible for her to swear whether she did or did not say something in the heat of the moment during a stressful event while having a conversation on the phone with a friend. Also, Marshal Cain, in using her lights and sirens to respond to the scene, was well within her rights; Brogdon was a career criminal that was under investigation by multiple agencies at the time of his death.”

  “Based on your opinion of the video your mother made, what do you think was her intent when she went to see Yuri Brogdon yesterday?” Captain Jones asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t yet watched the video,” I said.

  “But you told us about it and a copy was sent to every member of the SCTU as well as our task force,” he snipped.

  “Yes, but my mother underwent surgery last night to repair the damage done to her knee by Brogdon. I then went home and went to bed. I slept until this morning and immediately came to work. I have had no time to watch the video, plus I was worried how I would react to it. It is one thing to know your mother is in danger and another to watch it play out on a video. For all the bravado and tough talk about knowing my mother can handle herself in any situation, it is not something I like to watch. Especially given the fact that one of my parents has already been murdered.”

  “I see.” Jones looked at the second man.

  “Are you prepared to watch the video today and give us your opinion?” the second man asked.

  “Sure,” I said, feeling uneasy.

  The video showed my mother making a scene in the restaurant and arguing with Brogdon. Then it showed Brogdon hitting her with a gun he pulled from what appeared to be a holster near the small of his back, and Ponomerenko grabbing her roughly and pushing her toward the hallway. There, Brogdon hit a button on a remote and the wall moved, revealing a hidden room. The three of them go inside, Ponomerenko pushing my mother and my mom tripping slightly, which I didn’t believe was real. Brogdon sits her down in a chair. Ponomerenko pulls out a gun. Brogdon gets close to my mom, says something I do not understand, and then there is a loud bang as Ponomerenko fires into her knee. My mom instantly grabs his gun. It happens so quickly there is not even a struggle. Mom then fires once at Brogdon, turns in her chair, fires at Ponomerenko, and then returns her attention to Brogdon and fires three times in rapid succession.

  “Her first shot at Brogdon goes wide. None of her other shots miss, though,” Jones said.

  “My mother resides in the FGN. We have a gun range here and she goes three days a week with Melina Daniels. After the attack on the FGN, I took her to get a conceal and carry permit. She owns two 9mm handguns and a .22. If she had intended to kill Brogdon, she would have taken a gun with her. She lives with me and has my code to our panic room, where I keep a small arsenal of weapons, all of which are lawfully licensed. If my mother had actually gone there intent on killing Yuri Brogdon, she would have taken a gun, not just hoped for a moment to take someone else’s.”

  “Did you conspire with your mother to murder Yuri Brogdon?”

  “Of course not,” Peter West answered for me.

  “Why would I conspire to kill Yuri Brogdon?” I asked.

  “His men kidnapped you and your mother this spring,” Jones said.

  “And those guys died during our escape.” I said. “Realistically, if I wanted Yuri Brogdon dead, there are better ways to do it. Fuck, if my mom had wanted Yuri Brogdon dead there were better ways for her to get that done, as well.”

  “What do you mean?” Jones asked. I looked at Peter West. Peter nodded just once.

  “If my mom and I had conspired to kill Yuri Brogdon, he’d be in The Fortress,” I said. “He’s a mob boss. That means his crimes could have fallen under the jurisdiction of the SCTU as a serial offender. I have a fucking fan club inside those walls. How long would he have lasted if my fan club found out he had orchestrated a kidnapping attempt so he could torture me for information? I agree with Supervisor West, your questions are ridiculous. You have a dead mob boss killed by a little old lady while you watched and you are panicked to cover your asses and prove it was a conspiracy so you don’t get reamed for allowing it to happen while you had cameras inside his goddamn restaurant.” Captain Jones flinched at this and it all made sense. He was indeed covering his ass. If he could prove Mom was not in it alone, he might not lose his rank or be suspended without pay. Unfortunately, there was no conspiracy.

  “We’re done,” the second man said and stood up.

  “Good. I have retained a lawyer for my mother and you are not to talk to her without them present, do you understand?” I asked. I had not done this, was not even sure where to start. I would text Nyleena as soon as these idiots left and have her do it.

  “Send me his details,” the second man said and pulled out a card. The card said Sam Shields, Chief of Task Force Operations. I didn’t know what the chief of task force operations did, but I felt he was higher up the food chain than Captain Jones.

  Seventeen

  “I thought I was going to have to text you about getting your mom a lawyer while we talked,” Peter said after the task force members left.