Page 27
But what if it hadn’t? What if the nanites had erased an entire year of his life in their mindless quest to heal? What if there was nothing Kendra could do to bring it back?
Worst of all, what if nothing they ever tried could give him back Jordan?
~
They didn’t talk on the way back to the rental house, each choosing to sink into their own thoughts. The concept of the nanites “healing” Benny’s brain and removing the trauma, removing them, still rocketed through her system. What if they could never get their past back?
Dr. Hancock was going to do some research, then contact them through the burner cell phone Jordan had left with her. And even though it probably hadn’t needed saying, they’d reminded her that this was literally a life-and-death situation. The doc had been suitably serious about it, so Jordan wasn’t worried about her talking out of turn.
They were pulling into the garage when Jordan’s phone rang, the number flashing on the nav system. It was Internal Affairs.
She held up a finger to Benny asking him to keep his silence and answered, keeping her tone professional. She didn’t need to antagonize them right out of the gate. “This is Jordan Gonzalez.”
“This is Sergeant Gates with Internal Affairs.” His delivery was just as bland as hers. “I wanted to see if now would be a good time for an interview.”
“I’m in the car right now, as you can probably hear from the background noise. How about an hour? That’ll give me time to get back and grab a cold drink before we talk.”
“That would be acceptable.” His tone said it actually wasn’t. He’d wanted to catch her in an awkward situation. Catch her unaware to see if he could get her to slip up. But forcing her to interview while she was driving was just dumb, and he knew it.
“I’ll call you then,” he said, and disconnected.
Jordan had no doubt he’d call ten minutes early. Maybe even fifteen. Anything to claw back a little of the advantage she’d just winnowed away from him.
Benny gave her a small smirk, and after the way their morning had gone, she was ridiculously happy to see it. “Any reason you want to wait?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look at the surveillance footage from that night. I want to go over it before I talk to him. It’ll make me feel more solid about the events that went down, especially the things I couldn’t see.”
They got out of the SUV and walked into the house.
“That makes sense.” Benny was quiet for a beat. “Can I watch it with you? It’ll give me something else to think about while the ramifications and possibilities of what we talked about rolls around in my head.”
“Absolutely. I was counting on it, actually. You’re coming in with an unbiased set of eyes. You might catch something I don’t.” She headed toward the kitchen. “But let’s get settled first. I’m pretty sure Dev already has the video up on our secure server.”
They each grabbed a drink, gave Spot the attention she demanded, then settled at the kitchen table with Jordan’s laptop open between them and the video queued up.
It was strange watching the events through the cameras, from different angles and perspectives. That night, Jordan had been so intent on securing the inside of the church that she’d done little more than listen to Tate and his observations from the bell tower. Seeing everything play out on-screen gave her an entirely different perspective.
Sharing it with Benny made the moment strangely bittersweet. They were making a new memory together while watching something that had happened during a part of his life he couldn’t remember.
She didn’t know whether to find that hopeful or heartbreaking. Maybe both.
They watched the footage all the way through once at normal speed without commenting.
Benny had grabbed a notepad and jotted down a few things as they watched. Before long, he was doodling in the margins too. Faces. Handguns. A helicopter. Interlocking rings.
Jordan found herself watching his hand for a moment instead of the screen. His art was another piece of him that had survived, but the rings made her heart hurt. Something in the back of his mind remembered what he’d been doing that day. She could tell him, but would it hurt more than it helped?
She dragged her attention back to the matter at hand and pulled the cursor back to the beginning of the video.
“Thoughts?”
“That fucker was ballsy as hell,” he said.
“Which one? Benedict, the guy who popped him, or Davenport?” Jordan asked wryly.
Benny snorted. “All of the above, I guess. But Benedict? What a scumbag. I’m not saying that because he went after my sister. The guy honestly thought he was untouchable.” His gaze returned to the frozen image on the laptop. “I guess my only real question is, who killed him? The video image is shitty for all that Dev seems to have high-quality equipment.”
“We’ve all been asking the same.” Jordan leaned closer to the screen. “I know Dev’s enhanced it all he can, and been over it with a fine-toothed comb already, but let’s take another look.”
