Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
PRESENT DAY
Madeline
Garrett sucks in a breath and releases me abruptly. “This is it.”
I turn around, following his gaze to the top shelf, where the boxes look exactly like all the other boxes we’ve opened tonight. “How do you know?”
The warehouse shelving is high, and Garrett can’t quite grab what he’s reaching for. He shines his light around the room, finds a step stool a few feet away, and drags it over. He climbs up and passes the box down to me.
I stare at a normal-looking cardboard box that’s maybe a cubic foot in volume. It’s heavy, like a box of books, and the contents shift slightly as I back up so Garrett can climb down.
“This.” He holds his light close to the swirly red logo. “This was on the boxes we used to transport. If there’s cocaine in this warehouse, I bet it’s in here.”
I set the box on the ground as if there’s an actual spider perched on the cardboard. Garrett’s lips quirk at my reaction as he carefully lifts two more boxes with similar logos and passes them to me. I quickly line up all three on the floor in front of us.
I point to the first box. “That one looks like it was opened already.” Someone has peeled the tape up and stuck it back down. Garrett chooses that box, slowly tugging the tape up again, and my chest squeezes with hope that this is our chance to finally be free.
He pulls open the flaps, revealing two neat stacks of tightly packed black plastic, and for a moment, I’m afraid we’ve found more computer equipment.
But then I look closer and realize they’re brick-shaped objects wrapped in thick contractor bag material that shines under Garrett’s phone light.
He pulls one out, weighing it in his hand.
My breath catches. “Is that—” I was expecting Ziploc bags of white powder.
“Cocaine?” He nods. “Probably. I’m sure they wrap it well, so it doesn’t shift around and leak out.
” He sets the package back down in the box.
“Let’s open these other boxes and take photos.
” He carefully tugs up the tape on the other two boxes, and I snap pictures with my phone.
We’re about to close them up when he pauses with his hand on the first box.
“There’s a package missing from this one. ”
“What?” I lean in to look, and he’s right. The two other boxes are packed all the way to the top, but the third has a space where the package should be.
I do a slow circle, looking for it on the floor, but Garrett grasps my arm. “That’s the one that looked like it was already open. The tape was peeling up, and the contents moved when I handed it you.”
I remember the weight shifting. “Someone must have taken one of the bricks out. We should pack this stuff and get out of here. We have enough evidence to show the authorities.” I bend over to smooth the tape back onto the cardboard.
“No.”
I look up. “What do you mean? ”
Garrett frowns. “Maybe we have enough to show the authorities to implicate Waylon. But what about Jason?”
Even in the semi-darkness, I can see a shadow drift across his face.
“If Jason is willingly working with Waylon… I need to know.”
My heart aches at the pain in his eyes. When we were teenagers, Garrett believed that his best friend saved him, and when given the opportunity, he saved Jason right back. But what if Jason wasn’t just a dumb kid after all? What if he knowingly put us at risk and let Garrett take the fall?
I can see how important this is to him; I can hear it in the waver in his voice. This isn’t just about being free of Waylon anymore. It’s about finding the truth. “Okay, let’s go search Jason’s office.”
We put the boxes back where we found them and creep down the hall to Jason’s office.
“What are we looking for?” I ask, sliding Jason’s chair back. “Financial records?” I shake the mouse on his desk, and the computer monitor flickers on. “Jason is the CFO, so he’d have that kind of information.”
A password screen appears.
“Any guesses?” Garrett asks over my shoulder.
I know the password for Jason’s personal laptop, I’ve used it plenty of times when grading papers at his house.
He uses a version of my name. I quickly type MaddieSully424* and to my surprise, the home screen appears.
It occurs to me that if Jason is involved in all of this, he’s been doing it right under my nose and never thought I’d find out.
He must think I’m completely na?ve. And I almost married him and became the cliché of a wife who never had a clue.
I click around until I find a document with the company’s financial records, and search accounts receivable, accounts payable, profits and losses. I’m not an expert, but nothing seems to be out of order.
“I don’t know, Garrett. If this company is a front business for shipping drugs and laundering money, then they’re probably really good at burying records under other records. It could take days to sort through this, and we’d probably need an accountant.”
Garrett sighs.
“I’m not sure this is going to tell us anything anyway,” I continue.
“Even if we found something in here, all it would prove is that the company is hiding the money. Jason works for the company; he could claim to be an innocent employee.” I glance up at where Garrett is glaring at the spreadsheet over my shoulder.
“He could actually be an innocent employee.” More than anything, I want it to be true for Garrett’s sake.
“Maybe the fact that his phone worked when mine didn’t doesn’t mean anything.
” But even as I say the words, I know it’s more for Garrett’s benefit than because I actually believe it.
There’s also the fact that Jason got Adam involved in this mess in the first place. And let him take the fall.
Garrett obviously doesn’t believe it either. “Let’s just poke around a little more.”
We open drawers and a cabinet, shuffling through paperwork and office supplies, but again, it all just looks like normal business stuff. I pull my head out of a closet and switch off my phone light, blinking at the realization that the room is getting lighter.
“The sun is coming up, and there might be a cleaning crew coming in. I don’t know if anyone comes in on weekends.
” Layla almost always seems to be here when I stop by to see Jason, so maybe she comes in on weekends, too.
Does she know about the drugs in the warehouse?
These new revelations shift my view of everything.
Did Jason and Layla really go to Mexico to tour an electronics factory, or was it to meet with people involved in all of this?
My gaze drifts to the couch where I saw Jason and Layla straightening the cushions, and a tingling feeling comes over me.
I’ve had a few brief moments of wondering if I walked in on something suspicious that day. And maybe I did. But maybe it wasn’t what I thought. I lunge for the couch and pull the cushions aside, gasping when I find that the solid part underneath lifts up.
“Garrett, look.”
He hurries over as I open the hatch to reveal a box like the ones on the shelf in the warehouse with the squiggly red spider sitting on the corner.
“Whoa.” Garrett stares down at the box. I reach in to pick it up, and it’s much lighter than the other boxes—it only weighs maybe a few pounds, and the contents are much less secure.
They rattle around as I move it to the desk.
The tape isn’t very sticky, as if someone has opened and closed the box a bunch of times, and I pull it up.
Inside, I find a single brick of cocaine and a wad of cash secured with a rubber band.
My gaze flies to Garrett’s. “The cocaine missing from the box,” I hiss.
He nods. “It must be.”
I notice a beat-up black-and-white composition notebook peeking out from under the cash, like the kind that kids have been using at Maple Ridge High since we were students there.
I realize this one has probably been around since then because it has Jason’s name scribbled across the top along with the words AP Calculus .
“That’s weird,” Garrett muses. “Why does Jason have an old composition book from a decade ago?” He flips it open, his eyes surveying the numbers and letters written in Jason’s handwriting. “What is this?”
I recognize them right away. “Calculus equations.” I took this same class and struggled through differential equations, wishing I were reading a book instead. I flip another few pages until I get to the point where the calculations stop. I check the date at the top.
February 27.
That date is burned in my memory.
It’s the date that Adam died.
Underneath, I find scribbled notes with the words ~ 20 pounds = $950,000. The math may be simple, but that kind of money is huge. “Why would Jason have written this on the day you disappeared?”
Garrett’s face has gone pale. He props an arm on the desk as if he needs it to hold himself upright. “Twenty pounds is about how much cocaine went missing that day. And nine hundred and fifty thousand was what we estimated it was worth.”
Tucked in between the next pages, I find a stack of bank receipts.
About three weeks after Adam died, Jason deposited $9,500.
A week later, he deposited $9,500 more. And then again, a week after that.
Eventually, the bank changed, but the deposits stayed the same.
Understanding slowly dawns on me. There’s probably a limit to how much cash you can deposit in a bank at one time before they have to report it to the federal government.
I can tell it’s dawning on Garrett, too, because he slowly slides to the floor and props his forehead on his knees. I lunge out of my chair and wrap an arm around him.
“He—he set me up.” His voice sounds like there’s something lodged there, and he can barely choke the words out.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathe.
Garrett lifts his head and stares out across the room.
“Even when I realized Jason knew all along that he was trafficking drugs for Waylon, I thought, He just got himself in too deep. He screwed up, and when the drugs were stolen, he panicked.” He takes a shuddering breath.
“But that’s not what happened. He stole those drugs.
He came to me crying and begging for my help because he knew I would help him.
He knew he could keep the money, and I’d take the fall for him. And I did.”
I want to deny everything, to say anything to take his pain away.
But I can’t. Because I know it’s the truth.
Jason might not have known the lengths Adam would go to.
But he knew Adam had taken the fall in the past and understood how deeply indebted Adam felt.
It was probably a risk he was willing to take.
“He wanted the money.” Garrett’s blue eyes shift to mine. “And he wanted you. Getting me out of the picture accomplished both of those things.”
My chest burns with anger. “We can’t let him get away with it.”
“We already let him get away with it. We lost ten years together.”
I give his shoulder a shake. “He’s not going to take any more from us.
Look.” I wave at the box on the desk and the composition book with years of dates and cash amounts all the way up until last week.
“Jason is still stealing from Waylon and I’m guessing he sells it himself.
He’s taking smaller amounts, and now that he’s worked his way into the boss’s good graces and takes care of the finances, Waylon probably has no idea.
But it’s all there. All the evidence we need to finally be free. ”