He had explained a little bit about how it worked to go into the prison and the restrictions on what they could take with them. Since they were only here to speak with Jenkins, they didn’t need any files or personal items.
“I’ve never been in here before.” She glanced around, assessing the white-walled lobby and the handful of corrections officers mingling outside the security office to the left.
Ahead of them was a long hallway sectioned off by gates that could only be opened by somebody in the security office releasing the lock.
“Are you nervous?”
She smiled at him, looking a little tentative. “It’s just new.”
“You’ve faced worse than this.”
“And lived to tell about it. Except not, because it was classified.”
Put the woman in the middle of a refugee camp under fire, in the middle of disease outbreaks, or in the hospital in Renegade, and she rose to the occasion. With medicine, she knew what she was doing. She could take charge, and everything she did was with confidence.
Outside of her work in the emergency department, it seemed like she wasn’t convinced she could handle much else. Luca didn’t know if that was true. He figured she could withstand a whole lot more than she knew. But maybe she simply didn’t want to.
A highly trained covert operative had nearly killed her. Kira had ended his life in self-defense and saved a lot of people in the process. That wasn’t the work of a woman who couldn’t handle a dangerous job.
He understood the need to take a break, recharge, and heal from burnout. It seemed more like someone had convinced her that she had to keep everything small and not step out of her comfort zone in order to be safe. Trusting herself would go a long way to proving what she could do. Luca could only do so much to convince her that she was stronger than she knew. It seemed more like God needed to take the fear and change her heart for her to live with boldness.
“This way.” One of the officers waved them to the door. “Jenkins is already waiting for you.”
They were buzzed through the gate and entered the hallway, going all the way to the last interview room. But Luca could still see the door to the security office at the end of the hall. Not to mention all the cameras and other measures to keep visitors safe and inmates from escaping.
The officer pulled the door open. “I’ll be out here.”
Jenkins sat at the table, wearing the same orange jumpsuit and shackled to the floor. He was upright, but seriously pale. The former mayor glanced between the two of them as if nothing was wrong, like he hadn’t been stabbed a week ago. “You brought me a friend?”
Kira tried to pull out one of the chairs, but it was bolted to the floor. “There’s no call for being disgusting.”
Luca sat beside her. “We needed to talk to you. If you give us the answers we want, we’ll get out of your hair and you can go back to…whatever it was you were doing.”
“Stay as long as you like.” Jenkins sat back in the chair. “My social calendar is wide open.”
“What do you know about Dr. Torres?”
Jenkins shrugged. “Who’s that?”
“You know who he is,” Luca said. “The guy has been prominent in Renegade society for years, and he’s well known for his medical research.”
“I was in real estate. Not all that hospital stuff.”
“Turns out he’s also in real estate. The guy has property all over the city, commercial and residential. I’m really surprised you didn’t bump into each other.”
Kira laced her fingers together in her lap. “I’m surprised they didn’t bid against each other.”
Jenkins’s expression shifted, his lips curling into a sneer for a second, then it was gone. “Fine, I hated the guy with the fire of a thousand suns. So what?”
Luca rested one forearm on the table. “Someone ransacked his house, and now he’s missing.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I’ve been in here the whole time.” Jenkins seemed to find that hilarious.
“But you haven’t been here the whole time,” Kira pointed out. “You were in the hospital after you got injured.”
Jenkins leaned forward slightly. “You mean after someone tried to kill me?”
“Stuart Parker is in solitary, and you’re back here acting like nothing ever happened,” Luca said. “Why don’t you tell me who would pay someone to try and kill you? Then we can put a stop to it.”