Easton's Claim (Colebrook Siblings Trilogy Book 3) (19 page)

“Gotta be over a hundred kay here, easy.” He opened one of the bricks and her stomach twisted when she saw the white powder.

“Cocaine,” she said, feeling hollow inside.

“Yeah.” He looked up at her, his face grave. “No wonder he’s in such deep shit. The amount in here has to be worth another hundred kay in street value, maybe more. And who the hell knows what’s on this flash drive.” He handed it over to her, along with a passport.

She took the items even though she didn’t want to, and opened the passport. Greg’s picture hit her like a punch to the stomach, as did his false name and information. “It’s fake.”

Easton got to his knees, watching her. “He was planning to run. This was his insurance if he ever needed to get out of the country.”

Piper stared at the items in her hands as a sense of unreality hit her. “I swear to God I feel like I never even knew who he was.”

“Not your fault,” he reminded her, reaching out to run a hand over the back of her hair. “He did this behind your back, putting you in a shitload of risk.”

Cold seeped into her. How could he have done this to her? Hidden this shit in one of her cherished heirlooms and kept it in their home all this time?

It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She was so glad she had Easton now, instead of still being saddled to Greg.

He pushed to his feet, leaving Wyatt to grab everything he’d emptied onto the floor, and took her hand. “I’m betting it’s encrypted. Come on. Let’s take this inside and see if Charlie can work some magic on it.”

She followed him back to the house and stood there in a daze while Wyatt laid out everything on the dining room table. The others gaped at it all as Easton gave Charlie the flash drive.

Charlie opened up her laptop and got to work, calling two of her co-workers to help her de-encrypt the drive. “He sure didn’t want anyone to find out what was on here,” she murmured, typing away, eyes on the screen.

“There we go.”

Easton and Jamie moved nearer to her. Piper stepped close to Easton as he braced both hands on the edge of the table and leaned toward the laptop.

Numbers appeared on the screen and nothing else. No names. No address.

“What are they?” Piper asked.

“Not sure yet,” Charlie said. “Hang on.” She called someone else back in D.C. and asked them to run the numbers through their system at work. Within minutes the person called back and Charlie input the numbers through a program she had. “There we go.”

On screen, the website for a bank in the Cayman Islands came up. Piper put a hand over her mouth, disbelief crashing through her. He’d had access to an offshore account and she hadn’t even known about it? What had he been doing? Running drugs? Laundering money?

Easton glanced over his shoulder at her, saw her expression and immediately straightened to slide a hand around her waist. “It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured, pulling her close to him. “We just need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here before we alert the cops.”

“This is so much worse than I ever imagined,” she said in a shaky voice, her throat tight. The backs of her eyes burned. Greg wasn’t worth her tears, but this was so unbelievable. The level of deceit, the depths of his corruption, were too much.

Easton didn’t respond, just kissed her temple and kept her close while Charlie tried to hack into the bank’s system with help from her pals back at the office. Sooner than Piper had imagined, they’d broken into the account under the name listed on Greg’s false passport. What they’d just done was illegal but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Whoa, holy shit,” Charlie breathed. Now everyone was gathered around the laptop, including Austen and Mr. C.

Piper’s eyes widened as she looked at the screen. “Are those…dollar amounts?”

“US dollars, yeah.”

Piper scanned them quickly, a mix of shock and revulsion making her stomach churn. She counted hundreds of thousands of dollars as she added the numbers up. It was four times what Greg had racked up in debt while they’d been married. He’d had the means to pay it all off at any time, and yet he’d instead hidden it all away in the offshore account she’d been unaware of, and unable to touch.

“Is it from his parents, maybe?” Charlie asked her. “Maybe he socked away various amounts they gave him over time?”

Piper shook her head. “They cut him off financially years ago. This…he had to have gotten it illegally.” She swallowed and looked at Easton for help.

He was watching the screen. “My gut says it’s from Gallant, or at least from his network. Greg got in over his head and got desperate. He knew they’d come after him so he’d been socking this away and hid the package in the chest of drawers for collateral.”

It was unreal. “How did he get the money?”

Easton exchanged a loaded glance with Jamie before answering. “He must have skimmed money and product from Gallant or someone further up the chain. Maybe he’d embezzled money, too. It’s hard to say.”

Her head was spinning. The depth of Greg’s betrayal rocked her to the core. “We need to call the police.” She didn’t want him to die. She wanted to find out the truth, and for him to be held accountable for what he’d done.

“I’ll do it.” Easton pulled out his phone and walked into the kitchen to make the call.

While everyone else spoke in hushed tones of shock and disbelief, Piper stared at the drugs, money and passport sitting on the table. She wanted to move it somewhere else, because the sight of it tainted this room, and the beautiful family gathered around the old table where they’d shared so many meals together.

Easton’s low, deep voice carried to her from the kitchen. She turned away from the others and the damning evidence on the table and headed toward him. Right now she was numb, lost. She needed him to be her anchor through the coming storm.

He saw her come in, reached out an arm for her and wrapped it around her, holding her to his broad chest. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead on his pectoral muscle, breathing in his clean, masculine scent. Maybe the police would be able to track down Gallant and negotiate for Greg’s release now.

You’re not that naïve anymore, Piper. You know he’s going to die.

She curled her fingers into the soft cotton of Easton’s shirt and let out a hard sigh. She didn’t want to think of what would happen to Greg now, or how Bea and John would react to this latest news. She just wanted this nightmare to end so she could finally move forward with her life, once and for all.

“Sounds good. See you soon.” Easton ended the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket before sliding both arms around her back and hugging her tight. “The detectives and investigative team will be over within the hour.”

She nodded without moving her forehead from his chest. “So what now?”

“We should go take another look at the rest of what you’ve got in the shed. There might be more.”

Deflated but resigned to face what was coming, she straightened. “Okay.”

The air felt cold on her skin as she stepped out into the darkness to follow Easton back to the shed, Sarge waddling beside them. She shivered, then Sarge stopped and stared intently at something in the darkness that she couldn’t see. The fur on his back stood up and he let out a deep snarl that made the back of her neck prickle.

Easton’s body was rigid beside her. He stared in the direction Sarge was looking and reached out one arm to grab her and push her behind him.

The moment he did a gunshot rang out, shattering the stillness.

Chapter Seventeen

Piper didn’t even have time to flinch before Easton spun around and tackled her to the ground.

Fear sucked the air from her lungs, made her entire body rigid as she lay pressed into the ground beneath Easton’s weight. Sharp bits of gravel dug into her but she didn’t dare move, didn’t make a sound.

“Get to the barn,” he commanded gruffly, rolling off her and yanking her to her feet. She stumbled, took a jerky step forward. “
Run
.” He shoved her in the direction he wanted her to go, sent her lurching a few steps toward the barn.

She sent him an uncertain glance as he drew his gun from the holster at his hip but then did as he said, her heart in her throat as her feet flew over the ground. That shot had come out of nowhere. She hadn’t seen the shooter, didn’t know how many there were or what was happening.

The breath sawed in and out of her lungs as she raced for the barn, her skin crawling, waiting for a bullet to tear through her flesh. Easton’s running footsteps crunched over the gravel behind her.

The back door of the house burst open and Wyatt’s deep voice called out. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah. Shot came from the west, I think,” Easton answered.

Wyatt cursed and the door banged shut.

“Get down and stay low,” Easton said to her, his quiet voice cutting through the panic inside her. With his back to the wall he began inching his way toward the rear door of the barn.

She wanted to tell him to stop, to stay here with her, but she was afraid to call out in case it drew the shooter’s attention. Instead she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed 911.

Her throat was so tight she could barely speak when the operator answered, her breaths coming in gasps as she relayed the address and what was happening. She told the woman that Easton and Jamie were both armed DEA agents, and that she didn’t know how many shooters were out there.

As she spoke, Jamie and Wyatt appeared from behind the far side of the house, and raced over the open ground between the house and the cabin. Mr. C stood on the end of the porch holding a pistol in his left hand, and he wasn’t backing down.

A scream built in her throat as more shots ripped through the tense silence, this time coming from a different direction.

Oh my God, they’ve surrounded us.

Her heart moved back down her throat when Mr. C stepped off the porch, unhurt, and rushed toward the barn as fast as his bad leg would allow. Leaving the shelter and protection of the house to come to their aid.

“They’re still shooting at us,” she told the operator, her voice tight with fear. A horse snorted in its stall. “From at least two different directions—west and south.”

The woman told her to stay on the line to keep her informed. “Okay,” Piper whispered, her gaze glued to Easton. Beyond the open doorway, darkness covered the pastures and the forest. So many good, concealed positions for a shooter to wait.

“Piper,
run
!”

A streak of terror hit her at the desperation in that familiar voice. Seconds later she watched in horror as Greg appeared out of nowhere, racing toward her across the pasture. Before he’d made it halfway, he cried out and fell, the report of a rifle echoing through the darkness.

Oh Christ, they got him.
“No!” She took a lurching step toward the open door but Mr. C’s gravelly voice stopped her cold.

“Stay put. Easton will get him,” he ordered from the front of the barn.

Heart in her throat, she stayed where she was and told the operator to send an ambulance, watching helplessly as Easton raced out into the darkness across the pasture. Greg was crumpled in a ball on the ground, groaning. His weak voice carried to her as he tried to raise a hand and wave Easton off.

“N-no. They’re…coming,” he wheezed out.

Easton kept running. The crack of a rifle sounded from somewhere behind him in the woods. Piper’s heart shot into her throat, her gaze glued to Easton.
They missed. He’s okay.

Easton raced flat out across the pasture and Piper held her breath. A few seconds later he reached Greg, grabbed him under the arms and hauled him up across his shoulders. Greg’s scream of agony pierced the night, making tears prick her eyes.

Her heart slammed against her ribs as Easton raced back toward the barn, using the fence and shrubbery as concealment. More cracks from the rifle echoed in the stillness. He ran past her into the barn and went straight to the closest stall, lying Greg on his back on a pile of straw.

Piper grabbed a flashlight hanging on the wall and rushed after him. She switched it on, aimed it at them and held back a gasp as Easton peeled Greg’s bloody hands away from his middle to reveal the bullet hole there. Blood pumped out of the wound, dark and glistening in the beam of light.

She dropped to her knees beside Greg. He forced his eyes open, squinted against the sudden light. “Greg.”

He struggled to focus on her, his eyes so full of fear and pain it tore at her insides. “Piper.”

“I’m here. I’m right here,” she told him, grabbing one of his blood-slick hands and holding it tight. She held the flashlight steady as Easton went to grab a first aid kit from the workbench near the front door.

Greg bared his teeth and let out a horrible cry, then shook his head slightly and grimaced, his deep blue gaze locked on hers. One of the horses stomped its foot and snorted nervously. “R-run,” he said, voice urgent as he tried to push her away.

“No, I’m going to help you. Easton and I.” She set down the flashlight, aiming it at his belly. Then she stripped off the flannel shirt she wore, leaving her in an undershirt, and wadded it up before pressing it to his wound with both hands. Hard.

He yelled, his entire body jerking against the pain, but there was no escape. “I know it hurts, I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I have to keep pressure on it.” He was sweating, shaking.

She cupped the side of his scruffy, beaten face. My God, what those animals had done to him. “Greg, you have to lie still. The police are on the way, and an ambulance. They’ll be here in just a few minutes, okay? You have to hang on.” Seeing him suffering this way was awful.

He shook his head, as if he knew he was dying. “You have…to run. You’re not safe here,” he wheezed.

“I’m not leaving. We’re pinned down.”

Easton came back with the kit and leaned over him, his voice as hard as his expression as he dug out some gauze pads and handed them to her. “How many are out there?”

“Th-three.” Greg gasped, shuddered. “Gonna…come for her. Leave me. Get her outta here.”