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“We can alert hospital security and request officers be posted on this floor to watch over Cohen and any family who’s here. We’ll make sure everyone is protected. But, Gen, we’ve got to find Autumn. She could be in danger. And we don’t even know what she’s in danger from exactly.”
She covered her face with her hands and took a deep, shaky breath. Her hands slid down until her eyes peeked out over her fingertips. She mumbled something, but with her hands covering the lower half of her face, BB didn’t understand the words.
“What?”
She lowered her hands. “You’re right. I don’t want to leave Cohen, but his safety is the priority, which means finding Autumn and tracking down the shooter. We need to meet up with the team.”
“Gennessey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Gennessey spun around as BB raised his eyes to see her mother standing in the hallway close enough to overhear their conversation.
“Mom, we have a lead as to who shot Cohen. BB and I have to go meet up with our friends to get to the bottom of this.”
Carolyn Croft shook her head vehemently. “Your place is here with your family. Now’s not the time to play detective. Let the professionals handle this. You should tell the police what you know and let them find the shooter. You can’t leave Cohen when he needs you the most.”
Gennessey’s back was to him, but he could imagine her bright eyes turning stormy and her heart feeling heavy at her mother’s words.
“Mom, I am a professional. I don’t play detective. I am a detective. A damn good one. I can be of more help to Cohen by tracking down who did this to him than by waiting here at the hospital. I’m not asking for your approval or your permission.”
She brushed passed Carolyn and stormed down the hall without bothering to see if BB followed. He didn’t. Not at first. He waited for Carolyn to notice him, and he noted how her cheeks flushed.
“BB, I’m sorry you had to see that. Gennessey has always been stubborn, but she and Cohen are close. I never thought she would abandon him at a time like this.”
“No disrespect, Mrs. Croft, but you shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand. Your relationship with Gen is none of my business, but you should know Cohen asked us to look into this. We think Autumn is in danger, and of all the people he could turn to for help, he trusted Gen and me to handle it because he knows we’ve dedicated our lives to helping people in trouble. And if I have to have someone watching my back in dangerous situations, I’d choose your daughter over the police any day. She knows she doesn’t meet your expectations of what her life should look like, but she has a good life, Mrs. Croft. She’s happy, she has friends who care about her, and what she does matters to a lot of people. Even if she didn’t make the choices you hoped she would, you should be proud in knowing you raised a very special woman and stop being disappointed because she doesn’t agree with what you think is best.”
“I like you, BB, but I can see some of Gennessey’s poor manners have rubbed off on you. I thought you cared for her. If you did, you wouldn’t let her put herself in danger. It’s not right the way she makes us worry.”
“My mom worries about me too, but she’d be the first to tell you her place is not to stop me from doing what I was meant to do. She’d also tell you not to mistake my speaking the truth with having poor manners. I do care about Gen. I care about her a lot, but what I feel for her is not based on the person I want her to be. It’s based on the person she is. She stands up for what she believes in. She fights for what she believes is right, and she protects those who can’t or don’t know how to protect themselves. She’s one of the best people I know, and she makes me a better person just by being around her.”
Carolyn opened her mouth with what he expected would be a heated retort, but he held up a hand to stop her.
“I don’t have time to debate this with you, but I will say this before I leave. You have to stop trying to mold Gen to be the woman you want her to be. She’s pretty damn perfect the way she is.”
He didn’t wait around for Carolyn’s reply. He said his peace. Now it was time to get to work.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gennessey’s encounter with her mother left her with a heavy heart, but being surrounded by her KSI family was like a balm to a very deep wound.
The dynamic at Knight Security and Investigations was different than any previous place she worked. With the Army or CIA, everyone had their role, and they stuck to their role. Even in times when they worked with teams or units, they did their individual jobs.
At KSI, they had their jobs, but they stepped up into other roles when needed. And when it came to one of their own, it was always needed.
When Gennessey was hired as an investigator, she fully expected to handle cases on her own or to call on only the other investigators — certainly not the elite team members. But her colleagues showed her a different way, one where family didn’t mean blood relations or unreasonable judgments, one where everyone respected everyone and all came together for whatever was needed, one where she belonged in a way she’d never had before.
With the presence of the Alpha Team around her and the support of Jay, Isobel, Owen and a host of others back in Grayson Cove, Gennessey felt less helpless. They were good at their jobs, and when it came to the ones they were closest to, the KSI family was known to beat the odds and accomplish the impossible.
“There are still too many holes in this case.” BB paced their hotel room, where the Alpha Team and Gennessey had gathered. Those back in Grayson Cove were on speaker phone.
“Let’s go over what we know.” Cole Atwood slipped into his role as team leader, a position which became his when Jay stepped up as CEO of KSI. “This starts with Cohen and Autumn. How long have they been together?”
“A year,” Gennessey answered automatically. “Cohen was showing some of his artwork at a local gallery. Autumn’s friend dragged her there on the exhibit’s opening night, and they met there. Their first date was the next weekend. He proposed within six months of their first meeting. They originally planned to elope, but Autumn wanted a big wedding. Cohen decided to give her what she wanted, even though it was quick. The planning took only a couple of months, I think.”
“That was also around the time she sent in the Ancestry DNA test,” Zane Wilder added to the narrative.
BB nodded. “Cohen made it sound like the wedding stirred up Autumn’s curiosity about her parentage. According to her adoptive parents, she’d never expressed interest in it before, but I wonder if she did and just didn’t say anything.”
Gennessey shook her head. “I don’t think so. When I talked to Mr. and Mrs. Davis, they said they talked repeatedly with Autumn about searching for her birth parents. The adoption was closed, but they told her if she ever wanted to know more, they would help her search. She always told them she was happy with her life and didn’t see a need to look into her past.”
