Jax picked up pen and paper and jotted down the numbers. Loretta’s eyes had grown wide behind her dark frames. Listening to voices all her own, Evie finished the combination.
The safe opened.Jax realized he was holding his breath when he expelled it in a whoosh.
Evie toppled.
Loretta screamed. Jax leaped to catch Evie before she hit the carpet. She didn’t wake.
“Fetch a glass of water,” he told Loretta. Anything to keep the kid from screaming more.
Damn, the woman weighed nothing. Well, he’d already discovered that. He just wasn’t used to holding her when she wasn’t screaming and gouging his eyes out. He settled her into a leather recliner and pushed the button to lift her feet and lower her head. To his immense relief, she began to stir.
He couldn’t resist the impulse to brush an orange curl out of her eyes. The damned woman...
The kid returned carrying a glass of water and looking anxious, jerking him back to reality. Tears streaked his ward’s cheeks. Jax had no idea how to comfort her. Did she finally accept that her father was a ghost?
Didhe? And that Evie could speak to him? The performance had been credible—but there were far too many variables, and he preferred the logical explanations.
Jax took the water and offered it as Evie moved her head. “Drink,” he ordered.
She sniffed and narrowly opened her eyes. “Not brandy?”
Jax wanted to crack up, probably from relief that she was alive and still in this world, but he stifled that impulse too. Loretta ran for the liquor cabinet.
“What just happened here?” he demanded, trying to watch his language with the kid in the room.
Loretta came back empty-handed, looking puzzled and glancing at the safe.
“Mr. Post obligingly showed us what he wants us to see. Why haven’t you looked?” Evie struggled to sit up but couldn’t figure out how to straighten the recliner.
He’d play along with the ghost scenario for now. “Because you keeled over. Drink this. Maybe you’re dehydrated.” Jax pushed the button to set the recliner straight again.
She raised her expressive auburn eyebrows and sipped from the glass. “I’m not fond of spectral possession, but Mr. Post was too weak to speak. I hope you wrote those numbers down because I’mnotrepeating that performance.”
Loretta appeared torn, glancing from Evie to the desk, and back, then dropping down to examine the safe.
Evie set the glass aside and shoved out of the chair.
“You really want me to believe a ghost told you how to open that safe?” Jax followed behind her, terrified she’d drop like a rock again.
Loretta removed a manila envelope. The safe was too narrow for much else.
“All right, then call me David Copperfield or believe I’m a safe cracker. Take your pick. Can we open this or do we have to do it in front of a judge?” She crouched down beside Loretta to poke at the envelope.
That hadn’t been safe cracking. She’dknownthat combination.
Jax would rather believe in ghosts than Evie’s involvement in paranoid conspiracy theories. But his training and logic said otherwise. Conspiracies existed, and it was his job to uncover them.
Looked like he wouldn’t be leaving Evie alone with Loretta for a while longer.
Fifteen
“There arerubber gloves under the kitchen sink.” Officious Lawyer held his arm out to keep anyone from touching the envelope.
Loretta was up and scampering for the kitchen before anyone could tell her to. Maybe Indigo children were particularly obedient, Evie thought—or kept the peace by doing as told. That didn’t sound like Loretta.
“I’ll make a believer out of her yet.” But obviously, she would never make a believer of Jax. He scowled as if she’d committed third-degree burglary.
Sitting down, Evie crossed her legs and studied the ordinary 8x10 mustard-colored envelope. “I’d kind of hoped for gold and jewelry, myself. Would there have been a finder’s fee?”