Savage Son (James Reece #3) - Jack Carr Page 0,147

of the roll-up door with a handheld light, then checked the area around the lock before kneeling down to work the brass key into the old Master lock. It took some maneuvering to get it in and twist it, the mechanism fouled with years of grime and dust. True to form, it clicked open and Reece slid it from its post.

What secrets are you hiding? Reece wondered.

He could have used his Agency contacts to look into who was paying the monthly fees, but Reece didn’t want to alert the most powerful spy agency in the world that one of their former case officers who died under mysterious circumstances had a storage unit set up to outlive him. Reece wanted to see what was inside first.

He pocketed the lock and key and pulled up on the door. As with the lock, it took a bit of work to get it up to knee level, at which point Reece squatted down and pushed it up. Darkness.

Reece retrieved the light from his pocket. Out of habit he held it in his left hand, his right remaining free to go to the gun if need be. The light moved slowly from left to right, revealing an empty shelving unit on the left and a tarp over what appeared to be a vehicle.

He approached with caution, walking around the car and looking underneath it for anywhere the dust was more recently disturbed. It had been backed in; Tom Reece combat-parked just like his son. Seeing nothing that set off any alarms, he went to the front left corner and pulled back the cover.

Reece couldn’t help but smile. There, looking none the worse for wear, was his father’s 1985 Grand Wagoneer. The tires were low, and the left rear was clearly flat, leaving the old Jeep much like a football player past his prime sitting on the bench waiting for that one last play.

He wiped the driver’s-side window with his sleeve and peered through with his light. Looking at the handle for anything that looked cleaner than the rest of the vehicle, he pressed the button and slowly cracked the door. Shining his light up and down the broken seal, he examined it for anything unusual, particularly wires; once again all clear. Pulling the door all the way open, Reece used his light to inspect the front and passenger rows.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, Reece put his hands on the wheel, remembering. He then leaned over and opened the glove box, rustling through some oil change receipts and a tattered owner’s manual. Craning his neck, he looked in the rear seats.

Nothing.

Maybe Dad just left me an old Wagoneer? No, there is something else.

Thomas Reece wouldn’t take such pains to ensure a storage unit in Baltimore would receive monthly payments fifteen years past his death so that someone could one day discover an old Jeep rotting away.

Reece exited the vehicle in which he had so many wonderful memories and walked to the back of the classic truck. The window was down, and Reece suppressed a chuckle. He’d learned more than a few swear words listening to his old man curse the notoriously inoperable motorized back sliding window that had to be down before opening the tailgate.

Reece depressed the button on the back of his tac-light and looked into the storage area. An aluminum rifle case gleamed back.

Even all these years later, Reece remembered exactly how to drop the gate. He reached inside and pulled up on the handle, assisting the drop into position.

“What did you leave behind, Dad?” Reece whispered.

Positioning the case across the gate, Reece inspected the clasps. A small travel lock secured the contents. Reece hesitated briefly to take a look at every point where the rectangular case might have been tampered with. Again, clear. Putting his light in his mouth, he pulled his Winkler/Dynamis Combat Flathead from his back pocket, a tool that looked like the most aggressive screwdriver in existence. He inserted it between the shackle and body of the lock, aggressively pulling back on the tool, and snapped open the padlock. He then flipped its closures and opened the box.

There, lying in the foam cut out to keep it secure, was a duckbill-modified Ithaca 37 shotgun with a pistol grip and canvas sling. Reece pulled his father’s weapon of choice as point man in the jungles of Vietnam from its resting place and examined it. With the extended tube, Reece knew it held eight rounds. Four boxes of number four shot were nestled into the foam.

That’s it?

As much as Reece admired the tried and true Model 37, he had expected something more.

A truck and 12-gauge?

Something didn’t fit. If his dad wanted to leave him a Jeep and shotgun, he would have just left them in his garage.

The top left corner of the box caught his trained eye, the foam just a bit out of place. Reece pinched it with his fingers and pulled the top layer out of the case and onto the rifle, a key and a letter falling out with it.

Intrigued, Reece went for the key. A safe-deposit box key. Reece rolled it in his fingers and inspected it in the light. Nothing to show where it came from.

The letter. Reece reached for it. Sealed, he turned it over in his hands. It was addressed to James Reece in his father’s hand.

A message from the grave?

Reece broke the seal, pulled out the letter, swallowed hard, and began to read.

He read it quickly at first. Then he went back to the beginning and read it again, hearing his dad’s voice breathe life into the words that leapt from the page.

When he was done, he slowly refolded it and placed it back into the envelope from which it came before putting it and the safe-deposit box key in his pocket.

Then, moving back to the front of the old truck, he took a seat behind the wheel. He watched the rain hitting his Tahoe and the ground around it, each drop an attempt from Mother Nature to cleanse and refresh the world below.

Reece stared out the window in a self-imposed trance, his car illuminated every few minutes by a crack of lightning, losing track of time as memories of his father, his mother, the old Wagoneer, BUD/S, his wife and daughter, Iraq, Afghanistan, Siberia, Freddy, Nizar, and Katie, the living and the dead, passed through his mind’s eye.

Pulling a burner phone from his pocket, Reece pressed in a memorized ten-digit number, hit send, and brought it to his ear. The director of Clandestine Services answered on the first ring, and Reece gave Vic his answer.