Page 50 of Easton’s Claim

“False panel,” Wyatt said.

No way. She’d emptied it and packed it over here, then she and Easton had checked it out again the other night. “Where?”

“Right here.” Wyatt aimed the beam of the flashlight to where Easton was working.

“Hand me my knife, Pipe.”

She gave it to him, knelt on the opposite side so she didn’t get in the way while he worked. He gently pried one edge of a thin sheet of mahogany away from the back of the chest. It creaked ominously and she instinctively winced before reminding herself no one cared about a damn antique when the solution to Greg’s kidnapping might be inside it. Besides, Austen could fix it if it broke.

Easton worked up the seam of the wood, carefully easing it away from the back and to her surprise she found herself wanting to snap at him to hurry and to hell with being careful of the wood. She appreciated that he was being so careful with something that meant so much to her. He worked all four corners loose and pried the thin, flat board free.

All three of them leaned closer to see what was inside.

“Ah, shit,” Easton murmured, and her heart sank. He reached in and pulled out brick-shaped packages wrapped in black plastic and secured with duct tape. Then a bag, and a flash drive.

He opened the bag, and she couldn’t help but gasp. Thick stacks of hundred dollar bills filled it. And Easton just kept pulling out more. “Oh my God.” It was an obscene amount of money. How had Greg fit it all in there?

“Gotta be over a hundred kay here, easy.” He opened one of the bricks and her stomach twisted when she saw the white powder.

“Cocaine,” she said, feeling hollow inside.

“Yeah.” He looked up at her, his face grave. “No wonder he’s in such deep shit. The amount in here has to be worth another hundred kay in street value, maybe more. And who the hell knows what’s on this flash drive.” He handed it over to her, along with a passport.

She took the items even though she didn’t want to, and opened the passport. Greg’s picture hit her like a punch to the stomach, as did his false name and information. “It’s fake.”

Easton got to his knees, watching her. “He was planning to run. This was his insurance if he ever needed to get out of the country.”

Piper stared at the items in her hands as a sense of unreality hit her. “I swear to God I feel like I never even knew who he was.”

“Not your fault,” he reminded her, reaching out to run a hand over the back of her hair. “He did this behind your back, putting you in a shitload of risk.”

Cold seeped into her. How could he have done this to her? Hidden this shit in one of her cherished heirlooms and kept it in their home all this time?

It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She was so glad she had Easton now, instead of still being saddled to Greg.

He pushed to his feet, leaving Wyatt to grab everything he’d emptied onto the floor, and took her hand. “I’m betting it’s encrypted. Come on. Let’s take this inside and see if Charlie can work some magic on it.”

She followed him back to the house and stood there in a daze while Wyatt laid out everything on the dining room table. The others gaped at it all as Easton gave Charlie the flash drive.

Charlie opened up her laptop and got to work, calling two of her co-workers to help her de-encrypt the drive. “He sure didn’t want anyone to find out what was on here,” she murmured, typing away, eyes on the screen.

“There we go.”

Easton and Jamie moved nearer to her. Piper stepped close to Easton as he braced both hands on the edge of the table and leaned toward the laptop.

Numbers appeared on the screen and nothing else. No names. No address.

“What are they?” Piper asked.

“Not sure yet,” Charlie said. “Hang on.” She called someone else back in D.C. and asked them to run the numbers through their system at work. Within minutes the person called back and Charlie input the numbers through a program she had. “There we go.”

On screen, the website for a bank in the Cayman Islands came up. Piper put a hand over her mouth, disbelief crashing through her. He’d had access to an offshore account and she hadn’t even known about it? What had he been doing? Running drugs? Laundering money?

Easton glanced over his shoulder at her, saw her expression and immediately straightened to slide a hand around her waist. “It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured, pulling her close to him. “We just need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here before we alert the cops.”

“This is so much worse than I ever imagined,” she said in a shaky voice, her throat tight. The backs of her eyes burned. Greg wasn’t worth her tears, but this was so unbelievable. The level of deceit, the depths of his corruption, were too much.

Easton didn’t respond, just kissed her temple and kept her close while Charlie tried to hack into the bank’s system with help from her pals back at the office. Sooner than Piper had imagined, they’d broken into the account under the name listed on Greg’s false passport. What they’d just done was illegal but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care.

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