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Lucy took a deep breath, Noah’s support filling her with a deep joy that surprised her. She smiled widely. “Thank you.”
Inside the bank ten minutes later, Lucy was alone in a small room, Mick Mallory’s safe deposit box open in front of her. Inside was an antique pewter box, dirt caked in the cracks of the intricate, stamped design.
She didn’t want to touch it. She stared at it for so long that the bank manager came in to make sure she was okay. Lucy nodded, and after the manager left, she held her breath and lifted the lid from the box.
No care had been taken with the jewelry. It was thrown in together, the chains of necklaces tangled. Except for one small white box.
She took out that box and put it aside, releasing her pent-up breath. Nothing here could hurt her. She saw her ring, the one Adam Scott had pulled from her finger. Bile rose from her throat and she knew she was right—she didn’t want it.
But if she were dead, would her parents want it? Would it remind them of her life, or of her death? She couldn’t make that decision. She wasn’t going to make it for others.
She was about to put the white box back inside and close everything, planning to tell Noah to let the Bureau contact the families and ask them if they wanted the items. But her curiosity about what was inside the smaller box compelled her to open it. Scott thought this was important. Special. Why?
Inside was a gold locket. She didn’t know much about jewelry, but this looked real.
She took the locket from the box and held it up. It was tarnished and needed cleaning, but it was solid. Engraved on the front were the initials MEP.
Her blood ran cold.
She opened the locket to see if she was right, even though she knew she was.
She now knew the truth. Worse, Mallory knew she would know what this was. He’d put an impossible choice in her hands.
She wished she’d never opened the box.
Sean didn’t ask Lucy why she needed to go to the U.S. Senate Chambers late Monday afternoon. He drove her there. He didn’t even balk when she told him she needed to go into the building alone, though she accepted his help in walking inside.
“Do you mind waiting down here?” she asked after they went through security.
“I’m not moving until you get back. You do whatever you have to do, and I’ll be right here.”
She kissed him lightly, then turned and walked on her single crutch to the elevator bank.
She entered Senator Jonathon Paxton’s office and the receptionist, Ann Lincoln, said, “Lucy! What happened?”
“I’m a klutz,” she said, refusing to explain to anyone what happened last week. “The senator is expecting me.”
“He’s still on the floor—”
“He said he’d come up when I arrived. Can I wait in his office?”
“Just a minute,” Ann said and called the senator.
Lucy looked at the pictures on the wall. Senator Paxton signing Jessie’s Law, with Jessie’s mother standing at his shoulder. The senator at a rally to support legislation to put child molesters in prison longer. The senator at his daughter’s memorial service, her senior portrait in the background of the picture.
Monique Paxton looked an awful lot like Lucy. She’d always known she had a resemblance to the senator’s dead daughter, and she suspected that was the reason he’d bonded with her and helped her over the years.
But now…maybe there were other reasons.
Ann called from her desk, “Jonathon said you can wait in his office. He’ll be right up.”
“Thank you.”
She walked into his office and closed the door. Her heart raced. Maybe she didn’t deserve to be an FBI agent.
But then again she would never be able to prove that Senator Jonathon Paxton was behind the vigilante group.
When she saw the locket, everything had become crystal clear. The senator’s involvement in WCF. His close relationship with Fran Buckley. His personal wealth and how he used it.
