Chapter 53

Once Ash usheredher into the family chapel, Kayla paused to take in the long, open room, with its high ceiling and stained-glass windows.

At the far end, wooden steps led to a dais housing a beautiful altar and elevated pulpit. Large organ pipes climbed a side wall, completing the picture of piety.

This wasn’t the first time Kayla had visited here. Liv had given her the grand tour on one of her first forays to the Blackwell compound.

Despite its pristine condition, the family didn’t use the chapel for worship, but more as a place of quiet reflection. A place where they could leave their stressful jobs at the door and be alone with their own thoughts.

Ash indicated a front pew. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared behind one of two hidden doors at the back of the dais. One led to a kitchenette and restroom, the other to a secret bunker below ground level full of canned goods and survivalist supplies that had been placed there well before the Blackwells purchased the property.

Ash returned a few seconds later with two black tumblers full of water and handed her one. “Drink up.”

She smoothed the pad of her thumb over the silver BARS logo before quenching the thirst she didn’t know she had. “Thank you.”

“Now that you’re hydrated, maybe you could tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I’m sorry for running out on y’all. I . . . I had to make a phone call.”

“You got spooked when I mentioned HCVS.”

“I take it you made the connection between my company and HCVS, while snooping around the Secretary of State site.”

He raised a brow. “Researching, yes. They’ve paid a significant amount of money for your services in the past decade.”

“All legitimate, I assure you.”

“Why didn’t Phin know anything about them?”

“As I said, I’m the only one who works with them.”

“Who is them, exactly?”

Going any further would force her to break a sacred oath. One she’d made at the age of twenty-five when she was welcomed into Service. An oath she’d gladly honored every day for the past ten years.

But when she followed Ash to the chapel, she’d made the decision to tell him everything. Even if it meant expulsion from Service and revulsion from him.

“Twenty-five years ago, my mother and aunties, a few years into their corporate jobs, got fed up with getting paid seventy-four cents for every dollar their fellow, sometimes less competent, male coworkers made. Of even greater importance to them was the fact that men across the world were making a muck of things. Had been for centuries. Creating policy, killing policy—all for their own self-interest. Not giving a damn about their constituents, especially not the women.”

She took a drink. “Until election time. Then they loved us. The quartet spent the next several years climbing the ladder, making friends with other women across the world with the same sense of enough.”

“What was their plan?”

“Through activism and monetary influence, they would place women with honor, compassion, valor, and strength into political, corporate, governmental, religious, and social positions around the world.”

“Honor, compassion, valor, and strength. HCVS.”

“Very good, Agent.” Her pleasure faded as quickly as it surfaced. “HCVS or, as we refer to it, Service, couldn’t have killed Vicky. She was in a position to take women’s rights to the next level in North Carolina. Eliminating her would’ve gone against our guiding principles. Service doesn’t kill, threaten, undermine, or bully to advance our ideology. We use logic, facts, and persuasion through activism.”

“And money.”

She shrugged. “Welcome to a capitalist democracy.”

“You don’t sound wholly convinced Service didn’t kill the governor.”

“How could I be, when Mason identified HCVS as his employer? The only way he could have known about us is if someone from our organization approached him.”

“I’ll ask Rohan to check the dark web and see if Wade put up a shingle. But I have to say, it seems a little shortsighted for Service to introduce themselves when hiring a contract killer.”

“They wouldn’t have. Service is a group of highly intelligent women.” Kayla gave it some thought. “Mason is even more strategic than I am. Knowing him as I do, he would’ve found out everything he could about an organization wanting him to assassinate the governor.”

She lasered in more. “We don’t have a website or business cards or offices. Everything we do for Service is in addition to our other jobs and responsibilities. They wouldn’t have identified themselves, but they would have set up a communication system.” She stared up at the pulpit. “I know how this will sound, but . . . I still trust him.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She bolted to her feet and began pacing. “I believe him to be an honorable man. Something forced him to become a contract killer. I feel it in my bones.” Pausing beneath a stained-glass window depicting one of the fourteen Stations of the Cross—number six, where Veronica wipes the sweat-covered face of Jesus—she waited for Ash to point out the contradiction to her statement.

Mason could have killed her and Vicky, but he chose to break his contract instead. Yet he terminated Seb Grimball with seemingly no remorse.

“Let’s set aside Wade’s motives for now. What if a faction of Service developed a new plan, and you and Governor Stokes didn’t play into it—or something you were working on together put a crimp in their playbook?”

Kayla turned around slowly, her mind running a million miles an hour. “Maybe Vicky found out about a rogue faction and that’s what she wanted to talk to me about.”

Ash rose and edged toward her as if any sudden movements would snap the thread she was mentally pulling on. Her mind flashed back to Jillian wanting to hire additional security for Kayla. Sybil and Elsie insisting Kayla stay close to Ash in order to get the latest on the homicide case. Jillian’s secret meeting with Service’s Eastern U.S. Coordinator. Indira cautioning her to not discuss Jillian’s odd disappearance with other Service members.

“You thought of something?”

“No one has seen or heard from Mom since this morning. She set up a last-minute meeting with our regional coordinator, but didn’t show.”

“You think Jillian intended to share her suspicions with—what was her name? Indira?”

Kayla nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Sybil and Elsie have gone dark, too.” Her throat tightened. “What if Seb Grimball had a partner?”

“Someone besides Wade?”

“Although he didn’t admit to killing Grimball, it was clear he had.”

“Why, I wonder?”

“Maybe he feared Grimball would go after me again.”

“Or Grimball got a good look at him in the garden.”

“You’re determined to paint him as a villain.”

“It’s a flaw I have when people accept money to kill others.”

Her phone chimed. She put the caller on speaker. “What’d you find out, Susannah?”

“Mrs. Krowne booked a first-class flight from Asheville Regional Airport to O’Hare International,” Jillian’s assistant confirmed, “but the airline has no record of her boarding.”

The phone slipped from Kayla’s hand, shattering against the chapel’s wooden floor.