Chapter 7
By noon, the net had closed. Sarah Jenkins was picked up by patrol officers while trying to use a public payphone at a gas station three miles from the state line. She was brought directly to the precinct and seated in the cold, windowless interrogation room under the harsh glare of a single overhead fluorescent fixture.
Jax and Detective Miller watched through the one-way mirrored glass as Sarah sat at the stainless-steel table, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her face still bearing the faint bruise from Jax’s blow the night before. Her attorney—a public defender assigned to the morning intake—sat quietly beside her, flipping through the stack of digital evidence Miller had already compiled.
"She looks like she’s about to snap," Miller observed, taking a sip from a paper cup of bitter black coffee.
"Let her snap," Jax replied coldly, his reflection staring back at him from the dark glass. "She tried to kill me over a draft of a will she wasn't even supposed to see."
Inside the room, Miller opened the heavy metal door and stepped in, sitting down across from Sarah. He didn't waste time with small talk. He slid a printed still-frame from the kitchen camera directly across the table, showing her hands holding the poison dropper.
"Recognize that, Ms. Jenkins?" Miller asked evenly.
Sarah stared at the photograph, her chest heaving. She looked up at the mirror, knowing Jax was standing just on the other side. "He was going to throw me out with nothing!" she screamed, her voice cracking as she slammed her palms against the steel table. "Three years of my life! Taking care of this house, cooking his meals, dealing with his biker thugs! And he was giving everything to some imaginary charity! I deserved that estate!"
"It wasn't a charity, Sarah," Jax’s voice echoed through the small speaker system mounted in the corner of the interrogation room, cold and flat. "It was for my son. The son you didn't even know existed until last night."
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Sarah froze. The color drained from her face as the horrific realization washed over her. The boy she had dismissed as a stray annoyance, the kid who had ruined her meticulously planned murder with a smartphone app, was Jax’s flesh and blood. She slumped back into her metal chair, her bravado evaporating into thin air as the handcuffs were clicked firmly around her wrists.
Outside the observation room, Leo stood quietly beside his father, watching the monitor as the woman who had tried to destroy their lives was led away toward holding. He didn't cheer or gloat; he simply reached out and took Jax’s rough, tattooed hand, holding it with a quiet, steady strength.
