Page 45 of Anders and the Girl Worth Fighting For
Bill had conned her into allowing him to talk to the executor in her stead, so she wouldn’t have known about any kind of inheritance. After everything she’s told me about her grandma, though, I’m betting grandma left nothing to chance. I’m bettingshe sent the information she needed directly to Grace.
I found a half-full box in the back of her closet that looked promising and started going through it.
“Check the recipe books and photo albums,” I told Duke as I rifled through the box. An old tiara, some small shoes, and costume jewelry made up the bulk of the contents. I remembered Grace saying she and her grandma used to dress up. These things must have been part of what she would wear. If Grace was here, I would probably smile at the picture of little Grace all dressed up. As it was, I just tossed the items to the side and kept looking. It didn’t matter how cute little Grace was if big Grace was in trouble and I didn’t save her.
“I haven’t found anything, yet,” Duke called out as he held up all the books he could find by the spine and gave them a good shake. I had moved to the nightstand and started digging through it.
The clocked ticked down. This was a fucking mistake. I felt it in my bones, but I had nothing else. Something. I just have find something. I tore through the nightstand, dumping the drawers unceremoniously on her bed. Nothing.
Not one fucking thing.
“See if there is anything taped to the pages or written on the back of a photo. Based on what Grace has told me, her grandma was smart and likely left her what she needed in a way that wasn’t easy to find,” I growled, out of control.
I dug through the mail on the nightstand closest to the door. A letter from a law office caught my eye, and I opened it, hoping it was what I needed. The letter inside was unexpected.
According to the lawyer, they haven’t been able to serve Bill the divorce papers. Bill. Fucking Bill.
The letter is dated not long after Grace said she left him, not long after the last photo Tink could find of him in the high roller room at the casino. This puts his disappearance at months agoand confirms our theory that he got in over his head.
The letter can’t tell me whether he’s been kidnapped or is in hiding, and it doesn’t tell me whether he is after Grace or the people he is indebted to are after her, but it helps. I took a photo of the letter and sent it over to Tink to have him look into it more and then slipped the letter into my pocket, just in case.
“I think I found something,” Duke said from his spot in the kitchen. He’d covered the table with books and photos. It didn’t look like he had been gentle in his search. I’ll make it up to Grace later when she’s safe and in my arms again.
“What is it?” I asked as I came around the table to look at what was in his hand. It was an old photograph. One of a smiling little girl and an older woman that looked so much like Grace it hurt. They were dressed in costumes from another era, and they were sitting straight toward the camera. The style was an old western photo. The ones in sepia tones with serious expressions and ridiculous clothing, but the effect was ruined by Grace’s giant smile. Duke turned it over, and I saw what he had found. Written on the back of the photo were the words:
When you leave him, look under the fireplace mantel.
“Do you think this is the mantel in question?” Duke asked when he flipped the picture back around. Sure enough, behind the two was a fireplace with a rather elaborate dark wood mantel.
“Yes, and I think ‘him’ is Bill,” I said. “I’m also betting she never even saw this.” I took the photo from Duke and slid it into the pocket with the letter from her lawyer.
I wasn’t entirely sure any of this would lead us to her kidnappers. I suspected, though, that what they were looking for was what we were here looking for, and it was hidden in that mantel.
We didn’t keep digging around and left the place rather quickly. I’ll have to sneak over here after I find Grace and cleanit up for her. She shouldn’t have to see this.
Bill’s house was almost a bust. We combed the place and came up empty. If it weren’t for the decade of missions and vigilance, we might have missed the slightly too thick wall in his office. Duke had a knack for spatial reasoning, or what we liked to call ‘special reasoning,’ and found the discrepancy in sizing between what should have been and what was. It probably helped that he had been around a few wall safes in his days of being a rich playboy. Cleverly hidden behind a tacky portrait of a dog was a gleaming black safe tucked into a hidden compartment in the wall.
Since I wasn’t even close to the best lock pick on the team, that was Icebox, still safely ensconced in the bubble of Marine life, I called our second best for help. I don’t know what I would have done without Tink.
“Describe the safe to me,” he said when I explained the situation.
“I’m gonna dig around,” Duke said as he sat down at the desk and started going through everything he could touch.
“It’s a digital lock,” I said as I inspected the safe.
“Can you see a brand? Is it mounted to the wall, or can you move it?”
“It’s the kind you can pick up and take with you somewhere. Like the fireproof kind. Cheap ass Bill couldn’t even spring for an actual wall safe.” I pulled the safe from the wall and set it on the low bookcase in front of me. “It’s Sentinel brand.”
“Yeah, he’s not very bright. Find a paper clip. They make their digital safes with a reset button on them.” I could hearTink’s disappointment that this wasn’t going to be harder to break open.
I turned to the desk. Duke had done a number on it, and after some digging around, I found a paper clip.
“Ok, got it. Where’s this handy reset button?” I asked Tink as I unwound the paper clip.
“Look at the edges of the keypad and on the back of the safe itself. It will be a little hole, barely noticeable.”
I searched the safe with my eyes and fingers and found what I was looking for at the back of the safe. I quickly jammed the paper clip into the hole and heard a faint beep and saw a flash of light on the screen.
