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The next step would be to hand the money Pete embezzled to legit law enforcement, people they could trust to believe they didn’t have anything to do with Pete’s scheme, or the murders.
Jane stirred with a soft moan. Bridger tensed, ready to offer comfort if she awoke from a nightmare.
Instead, she settled back into sleep. Bridger studied her shadowed face. What would she think if she knew the truth? That her brother and Bridger’s team had crossed lines most wouldn’t dare?
Lines that let them retire as wealthy people, despite the stains on their souls. They hadn’t realized they were working for the bad guys all those years, but it was blood money all the same.
Jane’s eyes fluttered open, meeting his. For a moment, he thought she’d read his mind.
But she just gave him a sleepy smile. “You need some rest.”
He massaged the tight skin around his healing wound and managed a grin. “Yes, ma’am.”
Bridger crossed over to the couch, settling on the floor beside it. He leaned his head back, eyes tracing the wood beams crisscrossing the vaulted ceiling.
“This is quite the place Mason’s got here,” Jane murmured. “You all invested wisely, it seems.”
Bridger tensed. Her casual probing wasn’t unexpected. He should have known Jane would connect the dots between the team’s wealth and their shadowy work.
“We got lucky with some investments,” he said vaguely, eyes fixed above.
“Did my brother too?”
There it was. The direct question he’d hoped to avoid. Bridger slowly met her gaze. He wanted to confess it all. The lines crossed in the name of national security. Or so they’d thought. His doubts and regrets tangled up in duty.
But the words stuck in his throat. She deserved the truth. Just not yet. Not when she had so much else to worry about.
He offered a rueful smile. “Your brother was always smarter than me.”
Jane held his gaze. Puzzlement morphed briefly into hurt, before resignation took over.
“Get some more rest,” he said softly. “We’ve got a big day ahead.”
Jane squeezed his hand in silent agreement before settling back down.
He should have gotten some shut eye himself, but he couldn’t let himself fall asleep. He preferred to remain vigilant, guarding her dreams.
27
“He’s a cute kid.”
Bridger’s warm breath caressed Jane’s cheek as he stared over her shoulder at the photo on her phone. Kellen on his seventh birthday, caught in mid-laugh, his dark eyes shining with joy, the sun glinting off his tangled brown curls. He’d just opened a present from her. A bug-collecting kit to take along on their frequent hikes.
Would she get to spark that delight again, or would she be in prison, with Kellen believing her a murderer? Jane’s heart ached for herself and for Bridger, who she’d dragged into this mess, but mostly for the nine-year-old boy whose father used him as a pawn.
Rather than ease her nerves, as she suspected Bridger intended, his compliment only made her stomach ache harder.
He was right. It was the waiting that would kill you.He’d been right about the kidnappers, too. They’d called at first light, ordering her and Bridger to meet them at an abandoned truck stop deep in the mountains east of San Diego. Just a couple hours’ drive from the house where the murders…
She bit her lip, closing her eyes against the thought of those two people, dead inside that house.
Why didn’t the kidnappers just show up? What were they waiting for?
She looked into the stand of trees spanning the edge of the property at the end of the cracked, weedy asphalt. The abandoned truck stop the kidnappers chose looked like a scene right out of a horror movie. A couple rusted out semi containers, one with its doors hanging open, and an old convenience store, windows blotted out by butcher paper so sun-faded the edges had begun to disintegrate.
The team had flown in from Redemption Creek, arriving before she and Bridger did. They had long since melted into the landscape, keeping watch, supplemented by Tai’s all but invisible drones. They had the highest-tech equipment, and the best trained agents. Paige had analyzed the caller’s voiceprint, confirming that the kidnappers were the agents who’d tried to arrest her at the store.
Now all she and Bridger had to do was pretend to hand over the money, and make the agents give up Kellen’s whereabouts.Bronski, the head agent, had insisted Jane bring a ZTIC, a Zone Trusted Information Channel, to transfer the money. Paige had explained that a ZTIC was essentially a super high-tech thumb drive with its own, secure, internet access. Once it was linked to an account, the user could plug it into a computer, bypass the computer’s own network, and act as a tiny, self-contained computer to suck the money out of the account.
