Over the Limit

Over the Limit Brand of Justice Book 4 Lisa Phillips Copyright © 2023 by Lisa Phillips All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. eBook ISBN: 979-8-88552-164-2 Paperback ISBN: 979-8-88552-165-9 Large Print Hardback ISBN: 979-8-88552-166-6 Published by: Two Dogs Publishing, LLC. Idaho, USA Cover Design by: Sasha Almazan and Gene Mollica, GS Cover Design Studio, LLC Edited by: Christine Callahan, Professional Publishing Services Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Also by Lisa Phillips About the Author Chapter One 11:34 pm Western Colorado “So this is what you do?” Private Investigator Kenna Banbury glanced at the young man lying in the dirt beside her. She’d met him the day before at a diner in the next town. “Usually there’s no talking.” “She’s down there.” Luca started to get up. “We need to go.” Kenna grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back down. “I say when we go.” “It’s been too long. She’s down there.” Luca hissed the words, worry permeating his whisper. She shifted, prone on the dirt and grass at the top of the ridge. In front of her, moonlight glinted across the surface of the pond. Beyond the house, shed, and barns, mountains reached up to the stars. “You won’t be doing her any favors charging in there without knowing what you’re walking into.” She needed him past the fear and strategizing instead. “Tell me what all these buildings are.” Luca had given her a rundown of this ranch when he’d explained who he was, and how multiple families were kept as captives here. Migrant workers with no one to file a missing person’s report. Two years ago, the coyote Luca paid to get him across the border and into the US handed him over to the man who ran this ranch. Luca’s girlfriend, Camila, had been brought in weeks later. They’d been together since. “That’s the house.” Luca pointed. “The middle one is the barn, where he has five horses. Three of them are in bad shape. And a couple of ATVs. The next building is the bunkhouse. That’s just what they call it, but we don’t have rooms—just the cellar underground where we’re supposed to sleep.” He’d already told her about the living conditions. The backed-up toilet, just a sink to wash up in, and bare mattresses on the floor to sleep on. His clothes were decently made but worn. Jeans and old boots. A tattered shirt. She’d had him wash up in the bathroom of her motel room, but the grime on his hands and face seemed to have soaked into his skin. As though the life he lived permeated beneath the surface. Kenna didn’t want to think if the same thing had happened to her. If the things she’d been through had…seeped into her. She wasn’t one of those people who projected a façade. But for the last few months, she’d had to contend with the silence. Cabot, the mutt she’d adopted, had undergone surgery and now lived with Kenna’s former boss…or business associate—she didn’t know what Stairns was to her. The loneliness of the past few months traveling alone had saturated everything. She had spent weeks looking for Maizie. Waiting for something to show up on the website where someone, who she assumed was the teen girl she was looking for, had previously left her information. Nothing. Cue, staying under the radar. Waiting for the FBI to come up with a new lead when she had no movement on the case to identify a deadly organization that held entire towns in their grip and destroyed lives. Her friend Jax, an FBI agent, had his own life. Javier and Valentina Ryson had theirs. Kenna wasn’t willing for whoever had tracked her and tried to destroy everything to decide they were going to target the people around her that she cared about. The Rysons had a baby. Jax had a career. At least Stairns, formerly a Special Agent in Charge, had quit the FBI before he started helping her. Also, Stairns didn’t care if or how a deadly organization decided to come at him. He relished the idea of it. Kenna and Stairns had met up so she could see Cabot after the surgery. They’d exchanged numbers to brand-new burner phones and gone back to work. And all the radio silence of no new leads had started to grate on Kenna. When Luca came along, she’d jumped on the chance to work a case. She’d thought she was doing the right thing keeping everyone at arm’s length. For years she had embraced the loneliness, but now there were people in her life who cared about her, it was harder to shut them out and be content. “Are you even paying attention?” She glanced over at Luca, who had said he was twenty-three, but looked closer to seventeen. “Where will the owner be?” “Drinking. Probably sitting in his recliner. That’s why we have to go now.” It was almost midnight, so if the homeowner normally drank himself to sleep, he had likely already passed out. But they needed to be certain. She glanced at the corners of the buildings. “What about any surveillance?” “Like cameras?” She nodded. “They put trackers on each of us, but I cut mine off.” He tugged up his sleeve to reveal a grimy bandage on his wrist. Kenna wasn’t going to repay the favor by