Page 30 of Where Secrets Lie

The driver uttered a string of curses as he climbed out of the cab. He stood with his hands on his hips as officers opened the back of his truck and clambered inside. “What’s this all about?”

Hez helped Savannah up, and they walked to the back of the trailer to watch the action. Officers ripped open shrink-wrap on the pallets of boxes and began to go through the contents. Savannah stamped her feet to bring a little warm blood to her toes. This wouldn’t be a quick task—not with that many pallets of boxes. At the front of the truck, the driver continued to harangue the officers, and his language grew even more colorful as the minutes stretched out.

“Got something here,” one of the cops shouted after about an hour. He came toward Savannah with a wrapped statue. “This what we’re looking for?”

Her mouth went dry. Finally they had some evidence. Shetook the Bubble Wrap off the item. “Could one of you shine a light on it for me?”

A female officer promptly complied, and Savannah’s bubble of anticipation deflated. The statue was of two children holding hands. “It’s not an artifact, just a piece of decorative art for a living room.” She handed it back to the officer, who shrugged and took it back to the truck.

What if this was a bust? Hez’s information indicated the truck would have several hidden illegal artifacts, but the smugglers could have gotten wind of the trap. But that didn’t make sense either because wouldn’t they have avoided the area and gone a different direction?

The minutes ticked by into hour two of the search as she and Hez watched. The officers looked for hidden panels in the sides and under the floor, but nothing was inside but what was on the pallets.

Two hours later, an officer shook his head. “We’re done here. It’s clean.” He shot Hez a disgusted glare as they clambered down out of the trailer and headed to their vehicles.

Hez sighed and took Savannah’s hand. “Let’s get to the warm car. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“You can go, sir,” one of the officers told the driver. “Sorry for your inconvenience.”

“Sorry! Is that all you can say? You delayed me two hours for nothing.” He snorted and stomped toward the cab of his truck. He glared at Savannah and Hez as he passed. He reached the cab and pulled open his door.

The interior light shone on his face and Savannah frowned when she got a good look at him. She’d seen him before, but where? She gasped when recognition clicked into place andclutched Hez’s hand. “That’s Joseph Willard V, known as Little Joe. I met him when I was researching my book.”

The man shrugged off his denim jacket before he climbed into the truck, and she spotted a Punisher tattoo on his arm. She struggled to remember what she knew of the various branches of the Willard clan. Little Joe had gotten a business degree, hadn’t he? Why was the man driving a semi in the middle of the night?

***

Jess’s hand shook as she powered on the computer in her home office. A poisonous cocktail of caffeine, adrenaline, and fatigue coursed through her veins. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart. Tonight had been a very close thing—and it wasn’t over yet.

She’d been going nonstop since she walked out of the meeting with Hez and Savannah fifteen hours ago. A tense series of calls and videoconferences with Punisher and English Cream punctuated her day as they scrambled to find the source of the leak and figure out what to do with the shipment, which was already on a truck in Texas by the time Jess left Savannah’s office.

The big problem was that they had no idea where the ambush would take place. Hez hadn’t revealed the location during the meeting, and Jess couldn’t press for more information without raising his suspicions. Their mole in the Pelican Harbor Police Department was no help because the DA had kept the PHPD in the dark and worked solely with state police, presumably because Hez had told the DA about the mole. So Jess and EnglishCream decided—over Punisher’s loud objections—to keep the truck on its regularly scheduled route and send it into the ambush. The smuggled artifacts had to be in New York for an auction today, so they were pulled off the truck in a dark wayside outside Chunky-Meehan, Mississippi, before it reached Alabama, and given to a courier. A second courier took the provenance documents from TGU to New York so everything arrived at the auction house on time. It had been expensive and nerve-racking, but they had managed to pull it off.

Now came the finger-pointing. At least none of them should be aimed at her. Still, she braced herself for the fireworks as her monitor came to life. Punisher and English Cream were already online.

“Explain yourself, little Fury,” Punisher barked, referring to her avatar: an image from an ancient Greek vase showing one of the Furies, goddesses of vengeance and justice. “How did you let this happen?”

So she was somehow still to blame. Of course. She was in no mood to play nice. “Simple. I made the mistake of going into business with you.”

“Watch your mouth!”

Her raw nerves snapped. “Watch your back! Someone in your organization talked. That’s the only explanation.”

“She’s right,” English Cream said. “You have a traitor in your midst. I don’t know the details of the shipping routes and schedules and neither does she. Only your people do. If it hadn’t been for our friendly Fury, we all would be paying a heavy price for your leak.”

Punisher cursed. “I’m already paying a heavy price. The load of furniture in that truck was late thanks to the cops, and Ihad to pay a penalty. If we’d taken care of the lawyer like I suggested, this wouldn’t have happened.”

English Cream sighed. “No, something different and worse would have happened. We’ve been over this already. Take care of the leak.”

Punisher snorted. “Oh, we will. We’re gonna find it and plug it. Permanently.”

***

Savannah entered her office building after ten. Her first appointment with Melissa Morris had gone well, though she felt wrung out from the emotions of recounting everything to her. It had been cathartic, and she felt a tiny sliver of hope. Melissa had given her a Bible passage to memorize from Isaiah 43 about forgetting the past. She especially liked the part about God doing a new thing and making a way in the wilderness. That wilderness was in her past, and with God’s help, she could find her way.

She reached her office door and found Hez pacing the marble floor outside. “Hez, what are you doing here?” He wore the same jeans and TGU sweatshirt as the night before. Lines of fatigue fanned from his tired, red eyes, and his scruffy chin told her he hadn’t shaved this morning either. “Did you get any sleep?”

He shook his head and continued to pace. “I’ve been here since three this morning. There has to be a bug here at the university, Savannah. Has to be! Our intel was rock solid, so there’s no other explanation for my failure last night. I’ve searched the Justice Chamber, my office, and the conference room. I camehere to wait for you and Jess to arrive so I could search your offices. Jess arrived at seven, but her office was clean. So it has to be here in your office.”

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