G laughed louder, causing people to turn and look at us.
“I called Dad; he’s ordering food so we can eat when we get back,” Jack said.
I knew I’d regret it, but I said it anyway, “Don’t open the bag until we’re back at the office.”
“You can’t help yourself, can you?” Jay asked.
“No.” I couldn’t. Decades of doing things by the book made me a stickler for protocol. Working with people who didn’t communicate well had made it worse.
“The package is safe and sound in the back seat,” Jack put my mind at ease. “We know what we’re doing.”
“I know you do.”
As we approached the sedan, AJ tried to claim the front seat. “Shotgun!”
My glare sent him to the back door.
“Nice try,” Jack laughed at the man who’d served as his best man when he married Meg.
“I had a fifty/fifty shot.”
“Twenty-five/seventy-five,” Jack corrected him.
“Ten at best,” G said while turning the key in the ignition. “Winchester doesn’t give up control easily.”
We used AJ’s access code to park in the secure lot behind the building.
When John asked if he should have Nina come to the office, I declined. We needed time to sort through what’d we’d found.
John locked the front door and pulled down the shades. Then he told Meg to forward all calls to voicemail and sent her to Jamie’s office to be with Emily, Ashley, and the twins.
When Jack and Jamie hesitated to leave them alone, John said, “If you’d like, we can leave Janerek down here.”
The brothers shared a look as AJ took up position at Meg’s desk.
“Don’t mess up my desk,” Meg ordered from Jamie’s door.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am.”
“Let’s go,” I said, wanting to look over the stuff we’d found. “John, do you have evidence bags we can borrow?”
“I’ll bring them up.”
Everyone except Nathan, AJ, and Matt gathered in the upstairs conference room.
I glanced at my watch. “When does Nina’s shift end?”
“Like you don’t know,” Jack teased.
I knew she normally opened the store with Beth and left between two and three, but her schedule was semi-flexible.
“Nathan drove her home an hour ago,” John said.
I explained how we’d proceed as Doug set up two cameras, one on each corner of the table, facing the bag.
We’d open it and go through the contents with the white wall behind me as my only backdrop, so the videos wouldn’t lead back to SSI.
“We’ll examine everything closer off camera,” I said.
