“Got it,” Katrina said from the other side of the room.
Darwin turned to see her twisting the brass handle and swinging the heavy door of the safe open.From where he stood, he could see there was a lot of stuff to look through.
“Let me check the hallway,” he said, moving over to crack the door to the study, listening for movement outside.From the low murmur of voices coming from the living room, they were still deep in conversation.
“We’re clear,” he said, carefully closing the door and moving to join her at the safe.“Let’s be quick.We’ve already been in here for ten minutes.”
She nodded in agreement before turning her attention back to the safe.
Inside, there were two shelves.The top one was loaded with stacks of cash, each with a neat little yellow strip of paper around it.Each of them worth ten grand easy.
Under the shelf on the left was a stack of velvet-lined jewelry trays, holding mostly unmounted gemstones.Something told Darwin this wasn’t Grace’s stash of personal jewelry.He knew less than zero when it came to gems, but there had to be hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth there–maybe more.
But as stunning as the cash and gems were, it was the items under the shelf on the right that caught Darwin’s attention.A black leather-bound journal, just as Francesca had described it, with a stainless-steel revolver sitting atop it.
“We need to memorize the way everything looks in the safe,” Darwin said as he reached out to carefully remove the revolver first, setting it on the desk.He had so many questions, but decided to keep them to himself for the moment, for the sake of time if nothing else.“We don’t want your father to know we were snooping around.”
Katrina nodded, ignoring the cash and jewelry as she reached for the journal.Turning, she placed it on the desk, then opened it and flipped through the pages.Darwin frowned.Well, this was anticlimactic.It wasn’t like he expected to see photos of Jameson standing over Arthur’s body, but it didn’t look like there was anything here.
As far as he could tell, the pages were filled with nothing but names and dollar figures.Here and there were a few notes about what he assumed were specific agreements made between the parties, but nothing jumped out at him.Certainly, nothing liketen thousand dollars paid to murder Arthur Davis.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” Darwin admitted as Katrina flipped a few more pages.“Does any of this look like it’s related to Arthur?”
“Everything in here is organized around the company or project name,” Katrina murmured, scanning each entry quickly.“Without knowing which company or project Arthur was involved in, I don’t know where to even start looking.”
“We don’t have time to randomly flip pages hoping to stumble over something,” Darwin pointed out, throwing a look toward the office door.“Head toward the back pages.Hopefully, whatever Arthur was shot for is something more recent.”
She nodded, quickly flipping through the pages.
“Stop,” Darwin said, a word catching his attention.“Go back.”
Katrina went back two pages until he saw the word again.
Genesis.
Yeah, there was no chance in hell that was a coincidence.
Scanning the page, he saw names he was very familiar with–Silas Forbes, Harold Thompson, and Arthur Davis.He scanned the rest of that page and the ones that followed, but couldn’t find Upton’s name anywhere.He didn’t see Seth Stevens, the Navy Program Manager, either.In fact, he didn’t see anyone from the Navy program office at all.This must be a list of people who’d put money into the Genesis Project, not the people running the program itself.Suddenly, things started making a lot more sense.
“What is it?”Katrina asked, looking over at Darwin in between glances at the door.“The word Genesis clearly means something to you.What is it and what does it have to do with a man being dead?”
Darwin glanced at the door, too.“We don’t have time to talk about it now, but it’s big.Let’s take pictures of the pages associated with the Genesis Project.We’ll send them to Kyla and see what she can dig up.”
He appreciated that Katrina didn’t push for more info as he took out his phone and started snapping pictures.Less than a minute later, she put the journal back in the safe while he wiped his prints off the revolver before placing it back on top of the book.Closing the safe, he swung the painting back into place.
“The moment I get you alone, we’re having a serious conversation about what the heck is going on,” Katrina whispered to him as they left the room, closing the door behind them.
Darwin nodded, looking forward to the conversation.It seemed like the clues were starting to come together.
Chapter thirteen
“SorryMomwentonand on like that,” Katrina said as they walked into her room at the resort two and a half hours later.“There were a few times there I was hoping the floor would open up and swallow me whole.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Darwin said with a chuckle as he grabbed two bottles of water from the mini fridge and joined her on the couch.
In the interest of keeping with their cover story, after leaving her dad’s study, they’d gone upstairs to see her old bedroom, which turned out to be a good idea since her mom decided to join them.
“I personally enjoyed the cute pictures of you at your ballet recitals when you were a kid,” he added.“You looked adorable in all those tutus.”
