Chapter 5 - THE EMPTY SAFE
The safe was empty.
David knelt in front of it without speaking.
His passport was gone.
His backup credit card.
The title to his truck.
Insurance papers.
A sealed copy of his will.
Even the small velvet box containing his father's Ranger tab was missing.
Sarah stood in the doorway twisting her hands.
"Marcus said we needed the papers in case you didn't come back."
"So you gave him the combination?"
"I was scared."
"You gave a man I never met access to every important document I own."
"You were gone!"
David stood.
"I was deployed. Then I was missing. Neither one made my property his."
Sarah's anger appeared through the tears.
"Do you know what it was like? Every knock on the door felt like someone coming to tell me you were dead. Eli was a newborn. Maya wouldn't sleep. I couldn't breathe."
For one second, David softened.
Then Maya coughed downstairs.
His face changed again.
"Being afraid doesn't explain her eye."
Sarah looked away.
That was the point where David stopped asking her to defend herself and started asking for facts.
How long had Marcus lived there?
Five months.
That meant he had moved in while David was still deployed, long before the ambush.
David noticed the same thing I did.
"Five months?"
Sarah froze.
She had just exposed a different betrayal.
Marcus had not arrived after David disappeared.
He had been sleeping in David's home while David was still sending video messages to his children from overseas.
Sarah sat on the bed.
"It wasn't like that at first."
David's voice was almost quiet.
"What was it like?"
Before she answered, Agent Ortiz appeared at the door.
"Sergeant Cole, we found your safe contents."
"Where?"
"Not here."
She held up a photograph from a search warrant executed across town.
The papers were inside a storage unit rented by Marcus.
Along with something else.
May you like
A life-insurance form naming Marcus as the intended recipient through Sarah.
And beside it was a printed obituary for David that had never been published.
