Outlaw

Jax exhaled, and he saw both Margaret and Cher relax at his change in posture. It was as if somebody had cut the tension in the room, and they could finally breathe. “Good. That’s good. Have you debriefed her? Has she revealed anything about an attack?”

There was a long pause while Jax waited for his question to bounce across satellites to reach his partner somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. “She’s banged up pretty bad, but I did get a chance to question her.” There was another pause.

“What did—”

Connor continued, speaking over Jax. “She copied the contents of the thumb drive Shen Yu gave her onto a computer belonging to Jenn Evers.”

“The other flight attendant?” Jax felt himself deflate. It had been too much to hope that Lisa would have been privy to the details of a looming attack, but that didn’t mean Jax hadn’t hoped anyway.

“How far are you from Escondido?”

“Escondido?” Jax furrowed his brow. “Maybe twenty minutes. Why?”

It was obvious Margaret was interested in the conversation, but she passed the time by pouring herself a cup of coffee and leaning over to scratch Cher on the head. The dog never took her eyes off Jax.

“That’s where she lives.”

He closed his eyes and groaned. Not that they wouldn’t have sent a team in to rescue Lisa if they had known, but they could have long since had the intelligence with only a short drive down the interstate. “I’m going to retrieve it,” he said. “How long until you land?”

“Not for another twelve hours,” Connor replied. “But Jax?”

“Yeah?”

“Does the word yaoshi mean anything to you?”

“Not really. Why?”

There was a pause on the other end. “Lisa told me it was the last thing Shen Yu said to her.”

Why would he say that?

“That doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll let you know what I find on the computer.” He ended the call and turned to Margaret, who waited patiently for him to fill her in. “Lisa copied the intelligence onto another flight attendant’s computer before she was kidnapped.”

“And this other flight attendant lives in Escondido?”

Jax nodded, but he hesitated.

“Go,” Margaret said. “Cher and I will take care of the doctor and her little girl.”

He started to protest, but she stopped him.

“Just go. We know what we’re doing.”

“Thank you.” Jax set his coffee cup down and turned for the door.

Only twenty minutes away.

Escondido, California

Jenn kicked off her tennis shoes and flopped down on the worn sofa, still wearing a pair of sweatpants and a loose-fitting tank top. She had left with the intention of going for a short morning run, but it had been more walking and less running. The pregnancy had sapped her of her strength far more than she expected, and she was looking forward to a relaxing day of watching a few episodes of her favorite show on Netflix.

She pressed play on the next episode of Outlander, hoping the supernatural love story of Jamie and Claire would help her forget her real-world problems. But before the opening sequence even began, her phone rang. With a groan, she pressed pause.

“This better be good,” she muttered, then leaned over to pick up her phone from the coffee table. She didn’t recognize the number, but it had a San Diego area code, and her heart jumped in her throat.

“Hello?”

“Jenn Evers?”

She leaned back into the plush cushions and closed her eyes, wondering what product or scheme the telemarketer was going to try selling her on. “I’m not interested.”

“This is Commander Nicholas.”

She suddenly leaned forward. “What is it? Is Andy okay?”

The naval officer on the other end sighed. “Andy is fine. But he wanted to get a message to you before you saw it on the news.”

“Saw what on the news?” She grabbed her remote to exit Netflix and turned to one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw a video of an aircraft carrier with the words “Navy doctors scramble to discover cause of mysterious illness aboard USS Ronald Reagan” in a banner at the bottom of the screen.

“What’s going on? Why are you calling me?”

“Andy is sick. We believe it’s some sort of virus, but it’s spreading quickly around the ship, and the captain has ordered a quarantine.”

She heard his words, but they didn’t make sense. She imagined lots of people got sick on deployment. But she didn’t think squadron commanding officers ever called the families to let them know.

And I’m not even Andy’s wife.

“So why are you calling me?”

There was a pause on the other end, long enough that she wondered if he was going to dodge answering the question. “This is a new virus of some kind. Andy was one of the first to get sick on the carrier, so I wanted to let you know that he’s in good hands and…”

The knock at her door diverted her attention away from his vague answer.

* * *