Sasha steps away from the window and looks down at her. “Looks like Linda’s trusting nature wasn’t her fatal flaw after all, huh?”
Uncowed, Ruth tilts her head to the side. “Wasn’t it? She’s still dead.”
Leo steps between them and pulls Sasha’s attention away from Ruth.
“I asked Susan to wait thirty minutes to log the call.”
“Why?”
“It’s going to take us a while to get all those files loaded into Ruth’s rental van.”
She smiles. “Guess we better get cracking then.”
He grabs the hand cart and they begin to transfer boxes, load by load, and stack them by the door. From the couch, Ruth watches them go back and forth, her expression unreadable.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The rental van is a white cargo Transit. Ruth’s hand cart makes loading easier than Sasha imagined it would be.
It takes her and Connelly nearly an hour, working in silence, to move everything. They transfer eighteen large archival boxes, plus the contents of the filing cabinets—bound ledgers, briefing books, and annotated maps—from Linda’s front door down three flights of stairs to the truck, load them, and then walk back up three flights for the next load.
He calls Sutton and tells her to stop for coffee on her way and to take her time about it.
Then they face a decision. One entire wall of the shelving is filled with Archives Press documents. Linda incorporated the publishing company that published Caleb’s thrillers. And, true to her nature, she kept everything for both titles. Contracts, drafts of the outlines, draft manuscripts, galley sheets, royalty statements, style sheets. All of it. In addition, there are several boxes labeled False Flags.
“What do you think?” Connelly asks.
What she thinks is she never again wants to do post-midnight manual labor in a couture dress and heels.
What she says is, “We take it. It could prove useful if Caleb ever gets sued. And there may be primary sources for her book mixed in with it, too.”
He grimaces. “I know that’s the right answer, but …”
“Yeah, me too.”
Everything is finally loaded. Connelly slaps the rear doors in a gesture of finality.
As Sasha climbs up into the van and situates herself behind the wheel, a black and white comes to a stop in front of the fire hydrant. A cheerful woman emerges and calls out, “Hey, Cookie Man,” as the van eases away from the curb and onto the street.
The streets are empty, which is good. Because she drives home on autopilot as her mind churns. Linda’s dead. Ruth’s in custody. The archives are secure. Their cover is, she thinks, intact.
She pulls into the alley that leads to the driveway and small detached garage. The house is dark. The kids are still at the gated embassy residence, safe and, according to Violet’s last text, sound asleep.
She raises the garage door then pulls the van inside nose first, leaving the rears doors easily accessible from the front of the garage. Then she hops to the ground, walks around to the back of the van and opens the door to stare at the documents.
She knows if she goes inside to change her clothes, or pee, or get a glass of water, it’ll all be over. She’ll crawl into her bed and leave all these documents that are important enough to kill over sitting in an unsecured garage on a dark street.
So she picks up the first box, carries it through the garden gate to the french doors, up the back staircase, down the hall to the primary bedroom, and into the walk-in closet.
Her shoulders burn. Her legs ache. She keeps moving. One box at a time.
Connelly arrives home at 2:35 AM.
“Box eleven,” she tells him by way of greeting.
He picks up a box and follows her.
They work together to get the remaining boxes inside the house. Then Connelly lowers the pull-down access to the attic and Sasha climbs the ladder. He lifts the boxes overhead and hands them to her one by one.
