Put like that, Leesa realized she really did need to do something. You’ve got this. She had a feeling her bestie had more faith in her than she had in herself.
What Leesa didn’t know was whether or not Rachel’s faith in her was warranted. Well, hell’s bells, I guess there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?
Chapter Four
His digs weren’t much, but they were cheap, and that was all that mattered to him. Bryce Jordan had some cash in his pocket, a job pushing a mop and a broom for one of the many maintenance services in Dallas, and his side hustle was… small. Too fucking small to make him any real money. So far, things just were not going according to plan. He’d hoped that, by this point in his life, he’d have a large enough stash of cash that he could start over, establish himself someplace a lot more friendly than here.
He’d heard the Caribbean had islands where a man would be welcome and could live like a king for far less coin than what was needed just to survive here in the States. He’d always believed that, one day, he, Bryce Jordan, would be the king of his own tropical island.
Like that will ever fucking happen now.
Bryce was not a happy man. He hadn’t been a happy man for a very long time. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment he realized that everything in his life had really gone for a deep, dark, and permanent shit, but he sure as hell knew the woman responsible for it all.
His fucking bitch of an ex-wife, Leesa.
He wasn’t overly happy with his former friend and business partner, PFC Jerry Levine, either. Ol’ Jer had let him down on a couple of fronts. First, he was supposed to have let him know when and if the bitch ever left the Army. Bryce hadn’t actually expected her to rejoin civilian life. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d stayed in the ranks until retirement and then been buried with her damn boots on. But she’d been out, apparently, for more than a couple of years. Not only that, he’d also just learned that Jerry had been one of the guys who’d waved goodbye to her as she’d gotten on that transport plane out of Afghanistan. Clearly, he’d simply ignored his promise to Bryce. Bastard. Memories of his ex, of how she’d been, swamped him. Leesa was such a hard-nosed bitch, all prim and proper. She probably has the motto for the United States Army tattooed on her fucking ass. Not like anyone would willingly look at her naked ass. That was one frigid bitch. Of course, grab her hair and show her what to do with her mouth, close your eyes, and yeah, it might get a guy off.
He recalled how Leesa had acted all outraged when he’d asked her for a list of the delivery schedules and suppliers for the food shipments coming into the base in Kabul. Like it was a big fucking state secret or something. It was only food, for God’s sake, and she had been the one in charge of coordinating it all. He knew she had no idea about his side business, so she had no excuse not to have shared that information with him—her lawfully wedded husband!
Knowing the delivery schedules, as well as the suppliers would have helped him set up a larger distribution network for his drug sales. He’d had his own supplier and thought to get a leg up on the handful of other guys in the unit working the same scam. Of course, Leesa had been completely oblivious as to what he was doing. He’d thought she’d have been an asset, working for food services, a unit that had outside connections, but it hadn’t taken him long to recognize the truth. If the chain of command said something was confidential, then she kept it that way, not even sharing with her own damn husband. Marrying her was a huge miscalculation.
Jerry’s second and most damning failure, though, was in regard to the business. He’d been a part of an elaborate entrepreneurial effort in country. Jerry had been higher up the food chain in that hustle and had been able to stow away a lot of cash back home. Just before everything had gone to shit, Bryce had overheard Jerry telling Johnny Post, one of the other guys involved in the drug business on base about his special stash here in the U.S. A hidden treasure-trove of cash, an emergency escape fund, as it were, that Jerry had set aside before he’d been sent to Afghanistan. He hadn’t told Johnny where it was exactly, but he’d said he’d given Leesa an envelope with directions to his stash, telling her it was a goodbye letter to a cousin, and asked her to hide it and keep it for him—just in case. Of course, Mrs. Goody-Two-Shoes had agreed to keep Jerry’s letter for him. Wouldn’t give me inside information but she had no problem keeping a final letter for some other guy. Bryce had no idea why Jerry had done that, but suspected he’d been high as a kite at the time and had done it for shits and giggles.
It had been easy as hell over there, with the long hours his wife had worked, to search her stuff and find that envelope. He’d memorized the directions, going so far as to copy them down and then read them over and over again.
As soon as he’d gotten out of prison, Bryce had gone to the place, a small farmhouse within an hour’s drive of Fort Lee. He’d found the house, apparently abandoned at the end of a long laneway. He’d entered the bedroom at the back of the house, ground floor, and found the floorboards under the bed already pried up.
