Hemingway - Zoe Dawson Page 0,94

for a long time. He sat quietly, his eyes red-rimmed.

She sat down in the chair. “What happened to my brother?” she said, her voice calm and firm.

He fiddled with his dog tags, making a musical metal sound. She was reminded all over again that Jason could be dead like Maddy. It was almost more than she could bear. She slammed her hand down on the table and pulled out the photos of his dog tag and BDU top. “What happened to my brother?”

He looked at the pictures, then looked away. “We didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, his voice breaking. “It was an accident. Everything went wrong.”

“Start at the beginning.”

“We were sent to Argentina on a humanitarian deployment. It was awful. So much devastation.” He leaned back, his bruises and cuts a stark reminder of what the cartel was capable of when their money was stolen. “There was this guy always around. He’d bring us alcohol and coke.” He took a heavy breath. “It helped to forget pulling all those bodies out of the rubble.” He reached for the bottle of water and took a few sips, then bowed his head. “He told us about a stash house that was full of money. He said it would be easy to take what we wanted, and he would take a small fee. He could get us a helicopter to fly it to a safe hiding place, and we could come back and claim it. No one would suspect us.”

He rubbed at his eyes and finally met her gaze. “Jason overheard us planning it. We couldn’t take the chance that he would tell our commanding officer. We would be court-martialed. We kidnapped him and flew the chopper to that outcrop of rocks. But he got the drop on us, took the chopper and money. We thought he was long gone, but he wasn’t. He was gone for six hours. When he got back, he told us he was taking us in. The money was gone. He said he’d hidden it where we’d never find it.” He swallowed and took another sip of water, then leaned his forearms on the table. “Taggert lost it. He lunged at Jason, and he went over the cliff.” He choked up and tears streamed from his eyes. “We thought he was dead. I swear. We didn’t think he could survive that fall.” He tried to reach for her hands, but she jerked away from him. “We took the chopper back, then showed up for duty like nothing happened.”

“And the quarter of a billion dollars?”

“Lost. Only Jason knew where it was. If his body wasn’t at the bottom of the cliff, I don’t know what happened to him. I swear.”

He tried to reach for her again, but she eluded him. “I’m sorry, Agent Palmer. We didn’t mean to hurt him. We just were blinded by all that money. I’ve never seen so much. We only took a fraction of it.”

“Was it worth it?” she asked, rising.

He bowed his head and choked out, his voice breaking. “No. It wasn’t.” When she headed for the door, he said, “Wait! There’s more.” She turned back to him. “They did bad things to Joe. He told them everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, they know about Jason, and if he’s alive, they’re going to be hunting him.”

Back at the conference room, she filled out her report, then filed it. Her life was going to change. Had already changed. She picked up her cell phone and pressed Rebecca’s auto dial. She answered on the first ring.

“Shea. What happened?”

“I just sent you the report. But I’ll give you the cliff notes.” She told Rebecca everything, shrewdly leaving out her whole plan to take her revenge on Bates.

“You have been busy. But I could have read the report. Why the call?”

“I don’t want to work undercover anymore.”

There was quiet on the other end of the line. Was she disappointed? “That is excellent timing. Kai Talbot has been promoted to Supervisory Special Agent in Charge of the Pendleton Office. We have an opening for an agent with your background. Interested?”

Shea grinned. “You wily bitch. You expected this.”

“Mak and Griff aren’t the only ones who saw how attached you were to that cute, hunky SEAL. I was hoping you would be that smart.”

“I guess I am.”

Rebecca took a heavy breath. “I’m sorry about your sister, Bate’s role in murdering her, and about your brother. But if he survived the fall, why hasn’t he come forward? He thwarted a robbery of