Chapter 23 #2
“I mean, if you’re stashing a giant diamond inside, I’d think it would have to be,” Bray muttered back. “You’re going to get us into this box, right, Ramesh?” he said.
“Roger. Your name has been added to the authorized list for access,” Ramesh said into our ears.
“Do I even want to know how you managed that?” I asked.
“I couldn’t tell you anyway,” Ramesh said. I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Okay, showtime,” Bray said when we approached the bank’s door.
He swung it open and again put his hand on my lower back.
It shot a tingle through me, maybe because I missed his touch, maybe because it soothed my nerves.
We were moments away from what we’d come for.
The keystone of the past ten years was locked inside a small metal box somewhere inside this bank.
We walked inside and the smell of money and high-gloss floors mingled in my nose. No matter how modern and new a bank was, it could never shake the telltale salty, stale aroma of the world’s ultimate motivator.
Bray led us to an open teller. My heart was in my throat. “Hello,” he said pleasantly. “We need to access my family’s safe-deposit box.” He pulled a slip of paper out of his coat pocket and slid it across the teller’s desk.
The teller, a Black woman who looked to be in her thirties, took the slip and read the number on it. She entered something into her computer and turned back to us with a welcoming smile. “I’d be happy to assist you today. May I see some ID?”
“Of course,” Bray said and reached for his wallet.
I silently prayed she wasn’t going to ask me for ID too, because all I had was Lauren Thomas’s, and I doubted she was on any list. “This is my wife,” Bray said and nodded at me.
“She’s been helping me take care of a few things in the wake of my uncle’s death. ”
I was shocked at how smoothly the lie rolled off his tongue.
The teller seemed to buy it. For good measure, I gave her a sad smile with just my lips and then wove my arm through Bray’s and leaned against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Bray,” the teller said once she looked at his ID. Her name tag said JASMINE. “I can escort you back to the safe-deposit room when you are ready.”
“We are ready right now,” Bray said, and I squeezed his arm to stop him from sounding too eager.
“Sure,” Jasmine politely said. “I’ll meet you at the end of the aisle here.” She pointed to her left.
“He’s your uncle now?” I whispered to Bray once she was out of earshot.
“It was the safest bet with a different last name,” he muttered back. “And the lie worked for you, didn’t it?”
“Sure, to fool some neighborhood moms about why I was crying, not to break into a vault.”
“Well, it worked, so I’ll take it.”
“This way, please,” Jasmine said when we met her at the end of the bank of tellers. She opened a swinging gate to let us onto her side, and then led us to a door that required a keycard to access.
We passed into a sterile hallway with another keyed door at the end, and then into a room lined with hundreds of locked boxes. Each had a combination lock built into its face, made up of five numbered wheels.
Jasmine stood to the side and gestured for us to enter. She watched us with discerning eyes, as if seeing if we’d pass the final test of opening the box.
I silently prayed Bray knew the combination and wasn’t about to blow this. Sure, I could have broken into it with the right tools, but that was off the table if we were playing the roles of grieving nephew and spouse.
My heart thumped hard as I followed him to box 237.
“Two-thirty-seven, here we go,” he said out loud. “Just need to remember the right five digits,” he muttered, and I realized he was talking to Ramesh.
“Five, one, eight, one, six,” Ramesh read off.
I sucked in a breath, recognizing the pattern of numbers.
Bray shot a glance at me, and I discreetly shook my head, silently saying I’d tell him later.
When he entered the numbers, the box made a clicking sound and popped out half an inch. Another quiet gasp leapt from my lips.
Bray smiled before he turned around to Jasmine. “Can we have a minute please? There are rather personal effects in here.”
“Of course,” she said with a polite nod and stepped out. The door shut with a thick thud behind her.
Bray exhaled a breath and slowly pulled the narrow box from its slot like he was defusing a bomb.
The top was covered, I assumed to keep any dust from accumulating on its contents.
My hands grew tacky at the thought of seeing it again.
The most beautiful jewel I’d ever seen. I could already feel its weight in my hand.
Bray moved the box to the table in the center of the room and set it down with a slight shake in his hands.
I gripped his arms in nerves, excitement, relief.
The solution to my problems was right in front of us.
“You guys have gotten way too quiet,” Ramesh said. “What’s going on? Do you have it yet?”
Bray grinned at me. “Would you like to do the honors?”
I grinned back, thrilled and nervous in equal measure. With a shake in my own hand, I reached for the lid and lifted it. I held my breath as the velvet interior became visible, and lying on top of it was …
Nothing.
“What?” Bray asked and shoved his hand into the empty box. “How is this possible?”
“What happened?” Ramesh asked.
I was too shocked to respond. How had we been wrong?
“It’s empty,” Bray told Ramesh. “There’s nothing in the box.”
“What?” Ramesh said. “Are you sure you opened the right box?”
“Box 237,” Bray said. “And it would be pretty wild if we somehow got it wrong and that combo happened to work on another box in here.” He spun around to look anyway, like the answer to this new mystery would jump out at him.
I was still too numb to say anything. My hope of ending this game of cat and mouse collapsed like a building in front of me. “God damn it, Wallace,” were the first words to leave my mouth.
Bray swiped a hand through his hair. “So what does this mean? What do we do now?”
I shrugged in defeat, suddenly very tired and feeling the fact I’d hardly slept in the past few nights. “I don’t know,” I muttered. “Back to square one.”
“Which is what?” Bray asked.
I looked around in dismay. “Getting out of this creepy room of secrets would be a good start.”
Bray replaced the box with a sigh and met me at the door. “Look sad,” he reminded me.
“That’s not hard,” I muttered.
Jasmine greeted us with a kind smile on the other side and led us back to the front of the bank.
Soon, we were back outside standing on the street corner, at a total loss. A light wind blew and ruffled Bray’s hair. The busy sidewalks teemed with people going about their daily business, none the wiser that our plan had just imploded in our faces.
Bray scuffed his foot against the concrete. “What’s the significance of the combination?” he asked me.
“What?”
“Inside, when Ramesh read off the combo, you gasped like it meant something.”
“Oh. It was the date of the night my father got arrested. The night I met Wallace. May 18, 2016.”
He snorted. “That’s either clever or cruel, I can’t decide.”
“You just described Agent Wallace in one sentence.”
He looked up at the evening sky, and I traced the long line of his jaw and throat with my eyes. “What do you think it means?” he asked. “Did he put the diamond in there the night you met? Or was it never in there at all, and none of this is connected?”
“I unfortunately have no idea.”
He looked back down at me with a sad half smile right as a man walked up behind him. Bray lurched toward me as if something had been shoved into his back.
“Hand it over, and I won’t kill the girl,” the man said.
I instantly recognized the accent. One of Olena’s ghosts.
My blood froze over. I took a step back and bumped up against a wall. Except it wasn’t a wall, it was another man.
Two ghosts.
Maybe we hadn’t been followed, but they knew we were coming.
The ghost behind me wrapped his arm around the front of my shoulders like he was hugging me from behind. “Don’t even think about reaching for your gun, princess,” he said in the same accent the other ghost had.
I looked at Bray, suddenly racked with terror and trying to keep calm. His wide, gray eyes stared back at me as he swallowed hard. He slowly lifted his hands.
“We don’t have it,” he said.
We weren’t making a scene yet. To anyone passing by, I was being hugged and he was being patted on the shoulder, not held at gunpoint.
“Bullshit,” the first ghost said in his thick accent. “You don’t fly halfway across country to secret bank for no reason. We have been waiting for you. Hand it over.”
My ghost gave me a shake and gripped me tighter. I sucked in a hard breath and felt the power of his body behind mine. I couldn’t see him, but he was at least as big as the other ghost.
“There’s nothing to hand over,” Bray said calmly. “Why don’t we go somewhere and talk before anyone gets hurt?”
“Oh shit. What’s happening?” Ramesh said in our ears. “Erin—I mean Katherine, cough if you guys are in trouble.”
I coughed.
“Shit, shit, shit. Okay, I’m working on a satellite feed based on your position so I can see. Hang tight,” Ramesh said.
“No time for that,” I muttered.
“What’s that, princess?” my ghost said and leaned over to see my face. He smelled like thick cologne and cigarettes. I coughed again, both because the scent was choking me and in signal to Ramesh.
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” Ramesh said. “Corner of Walker Street and …”
My body hummed with the urge to flee. I knew I could get away; I’d done it many times before out of this exact hold. But I didn’t want to leave Bray to fend for himself—or worse, risk him getting shot.
I met his eyes again, conveying as much as I could with mine.
I can take him, I said silently.
It’s too risky, he said back with a subtle shake of his head.
I’ll go get help.
Erin, no.
The plea in his eyes almost broke my heart. I couldn’t let another person sacrifice themselves for me, but Bray was looking at me like it might kill him if they killed me first.
“Ten more seconds or so …” Ramesh said, but I could hardly hear him over my own heartbeat and the silent argument I was having with Bray.
I’m going to go for it, I told him with my eyes.
Don’t, he scolded back with a glare.
There’s no other choice.
Erin!
Just as I made the decision to throw my elbow into the ghost’s solar plexus, a screech of tires and loud crash turned everyone’s heads toward the street.
A car had flown through the intersection and T-boned another. A second car followed, screeching to a halt, but not in time. Glass exploded everywhere. Metal crunched.
“I got you,” Ramesh’s voice buzzed in my ear over the honking and shouting. The injuries looked minor, but it was enough to block the intersection and cause everyone on the sidewalks to move toward the scene.
My ghost loosened his grip, caught in the same surprise as everyone else. Bray was halfway bent over, having flinched from the noise of the accident behind him. He met my eyes, realizing he’d been freed from his ghost’s grip too. This time, there was no argument between us.
“Run!” he shouted.