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Jack was busy removing the boxes from the back of the Suburban and I joined in to help.
“It’s not like I could ID him from his face. It’s been six years since I was SWAT. I’ve stayed in touch with my brothers over the years, but we all have our own lives, our own families. Some transferred to other cities. A couple have passed away over the last few months. The rest are scattered here and there. Only a couple stayed with the team.”
“It was that bad?” I asked, referring to the last op that had left Jack fighting for his life.
He looked at me out of somber eyes, his face blank of emotion. It was the same face he used whenever we were at a crime scene. A face that didn’t want anyone to know what he was thinking or feeling.
“Yeah, it was that bad.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The boxes sat in a neat row on the dining room table.When I’d found them in the bunker, along with the dead body, I’d taken them almost out of reflex. I’d made the mistake of opening one of the boxes, kneeling on the concrete floor of the bunker next to the dead man. Inside it had been my birth records—myoriginalbirth records. Not the ones my parents had forged to pass me off as their own. I knew my real parents’ names and where they came from. The circumstances of their death.
I’d read through each scrap until I was numb with cold and anger. And thenI’d sealed all the boxes tightly with packing tape, transferred them to my car, and driven away without looking back. I couldn’t imagine what else could be worse than discovering the parents that had raised you weren’t your own, but if it were possible, the worse would be in the other boxes.
Jack made a fresh pot of coffee and I opened the pocketknife with fumbling fingers, wondering where to start first.
“I guess there’s no time like the present,” I whispered.
Jack sat our coffee on the table and took my wrist before I could cut into the first box, and I gave him a questioning look.
“If the FBI finds out about these boxes, they’ll be all over you and the contents before you can blink. It’ll make you an accessory after the fact. And it could cast suspicion again on your involvement prior to their death.”
I licked my lips but my mouth was dry as dust at Jack’s words. “I know that. I know this is hard for you. Straddling the line between following and breaking the law.”
He blew out a breath in exasperation and gave my wrist a squeeze. “Dammit, Jaye. It doesn’t matter what I think or feel. I stand with you. Always. And the point I was trying to make was that I wouldn’t blame you if you set fire to the whole lot of it. Maybe there are things in there you’re better off not knowing. Maybe things that don’t ever need to be brought into the light of day. It could cause more questions than there are to answer.”
I leaned in and kissed Jack softly. “Thank you for saying that. But you know as well as I do we need to do this. Just like I know if there’s something in here that the FBI needs to know that you’ll pass it along to them. Your integrity is part of who you are. And I wouldn’t ask you to change or compromise that integrity for me.”
I stepped up to the first box and sliced it neatly down the center seam. I folded the flaps open and sat the knife down on the table. Probably a good idea considering how badly my hands were shaking.
I recognized the neatly labeled files right away. My name was printed in block lettering on the one on top and the ink was smeared slightly where my tears had fallen.
“This is the one I opened already. It’s got all of my birth records, as well as the hospital records on my mother when she was shot and lost her own baby. It also gives detailed records of what they smuggled back in the bodies of my real parents and the other military personnel they transported back to the US.”
Jack stayed silent but I caught the muscles of his jaw clench out of my periphery.He took out the individual files and flipped through them briefly. I didn’t need to see the contents again so I moved on to the next box.
They were getting easier to open. My lungs weren’t quite as tight as they’d been when we’d first started.I sliced the second box and pulled back the flaps and then gasped at the contents.
“Holy shit,” I croaked out.
Jack looked up sharply and grabbed my hands before I could reach into the box. “Hold on a second. Let’s put on gloves. It’ll make things less complicated later.”
Stacks of crisp hundred dollar bills were banded together and lined up neatly. The money looked new and each group still had the bank wrapper around itso it was divided into ten-thousand dollar stacks.
Jack handedme a pair of spare gloves and I snapped them on. “I guess this was their version of a savings account. I’ve heard of people putting their money in a shoebox under the bed, but never in a bunker with a corpse.”
“Banks have shitty interest at the moment. Maybe the corpse offered them a better deal.”
“Jesus, Jack,” I said, rolling my eyes.
He pulled the money out and set it on the table. “An even two million dollars.” He pulled one of the bills out and held it up to the light. “And it’s real as far as I can tell, or the best counterfeit I’ve ever come across. A nice nest egg in case of an emergency. How many accounts did the FBI seize when they started the investigation into your parents?”
“There were the regular accounts at the local bank, both personal and business. They had a couple of savings accounts as well, a retirement account, and a brokerage account. All of the money in them was normal for people of their age, careers, and income. Then they had the four offshore accounts, each under different aliases. The smallest was just over a million dollars. The largest had just under sixteen million. The FBI wasn’t really forthcoming with information after that. I don’t know if they ever found out where the money came from. If they did, they didn’t share that news with me.”
“So another two million in cash just to be safe. Your parents were planners. They’d have an escapeif things started to go to shit—money, IDs, safehouses.”
I stared down at the money, knowing if Jack could see my face he’d be able to tell what I was thinking.My parentshadhad a contingency plan in place. They’d faked their death by driving their car over a cliff and staged it to look like a lovers’ quarrel turned suicide. They’d planted the scenes nicely. Arguing loudly at the restaurant where they’d had dinner over a man who’d shown too much attention to my mother—a man she’d supposedly acted too familiar with.
