Dirty Rotten Scoundrel (5 page)

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—my
original
birth 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 then
I’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 pocketkni
fe 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 it
so it was divided into ten-thousand dollar stacks.

Jack handed
me 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 eve
n 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 escape
if 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 parents
had
had 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.

There’d been other fights and a shoving match that had garnered attention from the local police. They’d had
too much to drink and had gotten in the little two-seater convertible my dad had rebuilt, and then they’d sped down the narrow two-lane road up the side of the mountain, swerving to avoid cars head on.

There
had been witnesses that had seen them drive over the side of the mountain. They saw the car swerve out of control and they all said there’d been no sign that the brakes had been used. The cops were quick to label it a double suicide after the way my parents had set the stage. They didn’t investigate much at all. And the bodies they’d recovered from the scene had been beyond recognition. Only dental records had confirmed their deaths, and obviously that had been as big a lie as the rest of it.

“I’ll start on the next one while you deal with that,” I said. I sliced into the third box and wasn’t surprised to see passports, cell phones, and driver’s licenses under multiple names. “Guess you were right about the planning.”

I was almost on autopilot now, slicing and dumping the contents, scanning through them quickly while my heart raced inside my chest. This is what my father had come back for. Money and fake IDs so he could slip through the cracks. He hadn’t come back for me. To tell me it had all been a big misunderstanding. That I had the wrong idea about the kind of people he and my mother had been.

Jack’s hand squeezed my shoulder
and I dropped my head down, bracing my hands against the table.

“It doesn’t get any easier,” I said. “Every time I think I’ve put it behind me I see the proof of what they were. For a long time after the FBI came to question me I lived in a state of denial
, even though they had irrefutable proof. I couldn’t believe that all of that had happened right under my nose. That my own parents had lied to me and betrayed me.”

“It should
n’t make you feel guilty that you love them. They’re your parents, Jaye. You want them to be good and honest and kind. And it doesn’t make you less that you still have hope for that somewhere inside you. Their job was to love and protect you. It’s not your shame but theirs that they couldn’t manage to do it.”

As usual Jack cut right to the heart of the matter.
Despite it all, I did still love them. They were my parents, and blood was supposed to be thicker than water. But there was no blood either. Just lies.

“Sometimes that psychology degree comes in handy,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

He kissed the back of my neck softly. “I love you. Just remember that.”

“I do. Every day. And I’m amazed by it. Humbled by it.”

I cleared my throat and moved to the next box. My hand was steadier as I sliced through the tape. The box rattled as I moved it and piqued my curiosity.

“Flash drives. What do you want to bet we’re not going to
like whatever we find on them?” The box was filled with silver flash drives, neatly labeled with a series of numbers, almost like binary coding found in a library.

“If your parents were as careful as I think they were, they’ll all be encrypted. I’ve got some skills in that area, but I’d be slow and I wou
ldn’t want to trigger any deletions if I made a mistake. Carver would be able to help us if I asked. He’s a freaking genius with computers.”

Ben Carver was a close friend of Jack’s and one of
the few FBI agents who could be in the same vicinity as me without questioning me for illegal activity. He’d helped us on cases before and he was a good guy. But I didn’t know if I’d be comfortable, even with someone like Ben, knowing what might be on those flash drives.

“I’ll think about it.”

There was one box left and I grabbed for the coffee cup Jack had sat on the table. I took a sip and realized it had gone cold. I went to the sink and poured it out and then got myself a fresh cup.

“I need to tell you something.” I turned back to face Jack. What I had to say deserved to be said face to face.

His brows raised. “Do I need to sit down for this?”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt.”

He pulled out one of the dining chairs and took a seat, leaning his arms on the table. “Are you finally going to tell me what’s been bothering you?”

Quick
. Like a Band-Aid, I thought.

“I saw my father yesterday.”

“I beg your pardon?” He looked more concerned than alarmed, and I wondered if he thought I was having some sort of psychotic episode.

“I’m serious. He was there when I walked into the house yesterday. Just walked right out of the dark like a fucking ghost. But he was real enough.” I took the silver ring he’d given me out of my pocket and tossed it on the table, and we both watched it bounce a couple of times before it spun to a stop.

“My mother’s wedding ring. She would have been wearing it when they went over the side of the mountain. But obviously it wasn’t them in the car. He’s alive. And he’s here in Bloody Mary.”

Jack was silent for a long while.
He picked the ring up and held it between his thumb and forefinger and then stared at me out of hurt and angry eyes. “What the fuck, Jaye? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I knew the signs of Jack’s temper. He’d gotten a hold of it since his misspent youth, and he had a much longer fuse now
, so it was slower to burn.

“I’m telling you now.” My own temper was frayed at the edges
, and the night’s lack of sleep caused a vicious headache to pound behind my eyes. “I just had to get a handle on it.”

“
By yourself. Because God forbid you lean on anyone or take any help from anyone. And while you were getting a handle on it a known felon and possible murderer is walking the streets.”

“He took me by surprise. And he’s my father.”

“And I’m the goddamned Sheriff. I had a right to know. And it doesn’t matter that he’s your father. I have a duty to bring him in. The law is the law.”

“Easy how quickly you become the sheriff instead of my partner,” I said, going cold inside.
“And I’m not trying to break the law. I just needed a few fucking hours to wrap my head around the fact that the man I buried two years ago is alive and well. So fuck you and the law. Really, I appreciate you taking the time to ask how well I’m dealing with all this instead of jumping straight into telling me you’re going to hunt him down and arrest him.”

My face was hot with anger and my hands shook. Short breaths made my lungs heave
and I wanted nothing more than to throw the coffee cup across the room and watch it smash into a million pieces.

“Jaye—” he growled and rubbed his hands through his hair like he always did when he was agitated.
“Fine. You’ve had your few hours to get used to it. I’ll even put the law aside for the moment. But you should have trusted me enough to tell me the minute I drove up to the house.”

“Why, so you could pull your high and mighty sheriff routine?”

“Don’t push me right now. I need you to fill me in on the details so we can start a search in the area.” He grabbed a notepad and pen from his bag, and the notepad slapped against the table where he dropped it. “It looks like I won’t be taking that vacation after all.”

I jerked back against the counter and my shoulders stiffened with pride.
I guessed if he wasn’t taking a vacation then that meant that we weren’t getting married either. Too many emotions were pounding away inside of me, and I knew I was only seconds from not being able to function at all. Blood pounded in my ears, my breath caught in my throat, and I was blinded by gathering tears.