“Well, good. That makes me glad. I just want this to be over with so I can get on with my life.”
“I know. Things have been on hold for you for too long. But don’t worry, Will. We’ll get him. Your name will be cleared, and hopefully Rich will spend the rest of his life in a very small jail cell.” Just saying those things reminded Cole that there was an awful lot on the line here and he’d better not screw any of it up. Whether or not Will could move on from this nightmare and live a normal life depended on Cole. The same went for Megan, Savannah and Aaron. A lot of people were counting on him.
“You’ve been a real friend to me through all of this,” Will said. “I’m not sure how I could ever repay you.”
“You’re already paying me. I’m just doing my job.”
Will laughed quietly. “I know. But when your life has been turned completely upside down, it’s nice to have some help turning it right side up. You’ve been on my side this whole time.”
Cole nodded, taking in Will’s kind words and letting them tumble around in his head for a bit. If Cole were honest, he’d turned his own life upside down the day he’d banished Dani. Thank goodness she’d resurfaced and helped him see the error of his ways. “I appreciate that. Truly. I just want to get the TCC their money back and make things right for you and for Jason’s family, too. They’ve suffered too much at Rich’s hand.”
“I really want that for Megan. Hell, I need it for her. She deserves a new beginning. At the very least.”
Cole wasn’t the type to come out and ask a guy about his love life, but there had definitely been sparks between Megan and Will at Jason’s memorial service. Judging by the passionate tone of Will’s voice, there might be a real romance brewing. “Of course. She deserves that new beginning so she can move on and live a happy life.”
“Yes. I want her to be happy.”
Cole took a gander at the GPS on his dash. “That’s our turnoff up ahead. We’re almost there.” The site was about fifteen miles outside town, up a long and twisting dusty road. From the information they’d been able to gather, the property had been unoccupied and unused for years, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the county. The incline was getting steeper, Cole’s truck shifting into a lower gear as the tires of the car ahead of them kicked up more dirt.
Cole took the final bend, a near hairpin turn. The road narrowed and pitched sharply downward, now suspiciously covered in fresh gravel. Someone had done some work out here recently, possibly to make it easier to get a truck in and out. The hair on the back of his neck stood up straight. They were in the right place. He knew it. Ahead, down in a flat gully, sat a tired ramshackle house with a wraparound porch and faded gray clapboards. The windows were boarded up, and a rusty No Trespassing sign hung from a metal cattle gate leaning against a rotting post.
Cole parked his truck next to the FBI vehicle, and he and Will climbed out. Bird and Stanton were arguing like an old married couple, which was par for the course for them. Battle’s car pulled up right behind them. Cole had considered obtaining a warrant to search the property, but Bird had done some digging and learned that this was a foreclosure that had been on the books with a bank in Albuquerque for more than ten years.
Leave it to Rich to find the one place in Royal that neither Cole nor the sheriff knew about, a place that for all intents and purposes didn’t matter to anyone. For that reason, and since this was a fact-finding mission where they intended to leave no trace that they’d been on-site, they’d decided to forgo the warrant. Rich had managed to be a step ahead of them at too many points in this investigation. They couldn’t afford a single mistake now that they were closing in on him.
“Cole, you leading us in?” Sheriff Battle asked.
Cole smiled, securing his bulletproof vest, which was just a precaution at this point. Agents coordinated by Bird had had eyes on this location for more than twenty-four hours and hadn’t seen anyone come or go, so they were reasonably sure it was unoccupied. “I’d be happy to.” He led the way down the steep drive, his boots crunching in the gravel. They advanced on the house, and Sheriff Battle and his deputy ran around to the back. Cole stepped up on to the front porch. The decking boards were so dry and brittle it felt as if his boot might go straight through them.
He pounded on the wood door, which was far sturdier than the porch floor. In fact, Cole was pretty sure it had been reinforced. If there was something inside this house, the owner did not want it found.
No answer came. Sheriff Battle radioed that there was an unboarded window on the back and that they couldn’t see anyone inside. Cole pounded one more time, then got out his kit to pick the lock. It was the best way to keep their visit a secret.
Like magic, the door popped open. Cole immediately saw that ithadbeen reinforced with heavy-gauge steel. The place was empty—old wood floors, more dust and cobwebs than a bad haunted house. Cole trailed across the front room and rapped on the window glass. Thick. And hazy, although he suspected not from time or grime. It was bulletproof. Further evidence that something was here, and whatever it was, it was big.
Stanton walked back into the room. “The house is clear.”
“All right, then. Now we really look,” Cole said.
The team searched every square inch, rapping on walls, listening for dead spots. It wasn’t until Cole drove the heel of his boot into the floor of the kitchen pantry that he figured out there was a false panel. “Sheriff,” he called, dropping down to his knees and feeling around the perimeter near the baseboards. “Bird. Stanton. I think I found something.”
Sheriff Battle rushed into the room, followed closely by the FBI agents. “Let’s see what we got.”
With the help of a crowbar, Cole was able to lift the panel, which was cut perfectly to fit the space. What he saw under the floor was almost too much to believe—bar after bar of solid gold. “Bingo,” Cole said. Vindication sure felt good.
“Hoo, doggy,” Sheriff Battle said, looking over Cole’s shoulder and down into the carefully constructed metal compartments hanging between the floor joists. This gold had been well hidden. Just not quite well enough.
“There’s no way we can confiscate this now. It’s just too much. We’d have to bring in much bigger trucks and a crew. And get that warrant.” Cole’s brain was in overdrive as his eyes pored over the glistening gold bars, mulling over the questions and possible answers. Was this the money missing from the TCC and Will’s accounts? Was it Rich’s plan to use this money after he faked his own death and killed Jason in the process? If so, Rich had to be coming back soon. What more damage could he possibly do? They not only had to catch him soon, this was the best place to do it. “We can be damn sure that Rich will come back out here for this. There’s no way he’s just going to leave this behind, especially if he’s figured out we’re on to him. It’s only a matter of time before he tries to get to this and hightail it out of the country, probably back to Mexico.”
“Agreed. I think that’s our best course of action,” Stanton said. “We’ll lock everything up and request a pair of agents out here to keep an eye on it around the clock. Nobody will be able to touch this without us knowing about it.”
Cole was a bit disappointed in that part of the plan, since it only meant more waiting, but he reminded himself that his patience would ultimately be rewarded. With the help of Sheriff Battle, he got the panel back into place and they left the house in the same condition as when they’d arrived.
Cole said his goodbyes to Battle, Bird and Stanton, promising that they would have a call soon to discuss their plan to get Rich out to this house to retrieve his gold. He then drove Will back to his car at the TCC.
“Thanks for letting me ride along today,” Will said. “At least I know we’re one step closer to catching Rich.”
“Every step forward is a good one.” He clapped Will on the shoulder. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
