Chapter 1 - The Dead Man's Timer
The rhythmic beep... beep... beep... coming from the darkness of Locker 42 sounded like a heart monitor counting down to zero.
My phone was still vibrating in my hand. Mother calling.
"Turn the phone off," the US Marshal snapped. "Take the battery out if you can. If you answer it, her people will triangulate your location in less than sixty seconds. We don't have that kind of time."
I stared at her, my thumb hovering over the red decline button. "Her people? She's a sixty-five-year-old woman who bakes apple pies for the church bake sale."
"She’s a handler for the Sinaloa cartel," the Marshal replied, her voice devoid of any emotion. "And right now, she realizes your father slipped through her fingers. Turn. The. Phone. Off."
I powered the device down. The screen went black.
"My name is Agent Keller," she said, pulling a tactical flashlight from her trench coat. She illuminated the interior of the storage locker. "And if you don't use that silver key in the next ten seconds, the incendiary charges wired to the hard drives inside this unit are going to turn us both into ash."
Panic spiked in my chest. I rushed into the dusty, concrete-walled unit. In the center of the room sat a heavy steel desk. On top of it was a black metal lockbox with a digital timer counting down.
00:00:11.
00:00:10.
I shoved the jagged silver key into the brass cylinder on the front of the box and twisted it hard to the right.
The timer froze at 00:00:04.
A heavy click echoed through the locker. The lid popped open. Inside, there were three things: a stack of bearer bonds, a thumb drive, and a black satellite phone.
Agent Keller exhaled a long, shaky breath. "He said you'd be fast."
"Where is my father?" I demanded, my voice shaking. "I stood over his body, Keller. I identified him at the morgue. I saw his face."
"You saw a John Doe with a surgically altered jawline and a custom silicone dermal overlay," Keller said, stepping into the unit and scooping up the thumb drive. "Your father, Arthur Vance, has been the highest-level federal informant inside the Midwest money-laundering circuit for fifteen years. He faked his death to protect you."
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"Protect me from what?"
"From your mother," Keller said, her eyes meeting mine. "She ordered the hit on him. And once she realizes the coffin is empty, she’s going to come for the only leverage he has left. She's going to come for your wife and your twin boys."
