“Big brother’s name is DylanIvesOswin for a reason, just as you got stuck with the DamonIvesJackson moniker.” Conan took another swig of beer. “We’re twigs off the old family tree.”
“How did you find me in the middle of the desert?” Irritated that he was even having this conversation, Jax threw another pebble at the fire.
“Once Nadine reported we had a strange family member roaming around, I tracked you. We keep an eye on the Mojave. Heavy-duty illegal marijuana growers out here. They get mixed up with some bad mad scientist stuff, so we got curious.”
“Can’t say I’ve met any drug dealers or mad scientists yet.” Jax watched him warily. “Even a satellite can’t track me when my phone is off. For all intents and purposes, I should be invisible.”
Conan snorted. “You’re more visible here than in the city. Let’s say Magnus and I are in the information business. You want to explain why you’re here and want to be invisible? It’s possible we can help.”
Jax sipped his coffee. “You don’t even know who I am.”
“Georgia license plate, driver’s license... Not a stretch. You want to know what’s in your credit report?” Conan crushed his beer can.
Definitely the kind of thing Jax’s hacker team would have done—and they were trained military intelligence.
“You’re tracking a name that might not even belong to me,” Jax retorted. “My birth certificate says Damon Ives Jackson, parents Franklin and Hannah Jackson. They died in a car crash nearly twenty years ago. I have just learned that Franklin’s fingerprints belong to Aaron Ives, owner of this patch of dirt.”
“Pretty danged clever for a lawyer to track property that might belong to him.” Conan spoke with sarcasm. “Proves you might be entertaining.”
Jax scowled. Talking to a human instead of a jackrabbit had its moments. He continued with the revelation that had sent him careening off track. “The Franklin Jackson I called father was actually Aaron Ives’attorney.” It hadn’t taken spy equipment to search databases, but connections had helped. “According to his death certificate, Aaron Ives died in a mining accident in that mound right over there that I’m not even going to call a mountain.”
Conan eyed the rough hillside. “Lots of abandoned mines out here. Digging them up is seldom profitable. That means no body, right? When did he die?”
No body, of course. That would explain heaps and bunches. “Aaron Ives died months beforeFranklin Jacksonarrived in Savannah, Georgia and took a job at Stockton and Stockton, LLC.” Stephen Stockton being the man Jax had called his adoptive father since his birth parents had died. “Franklin was married when he arrived, and I was born a year later.”
“Huh. Maybe he named you after his recently deceased client.” Conan scuffed his boot in the dust, thinking.
“The client whosefingerprintshis matched? What are the chances a military security clearance would have the wrong fingerprints?” Jax had verified the father he thought had died in a car accident had the same fingerprints as the man who had purportedly died in that mine. One man couldn’t die twice.
Which meant his father might have murdered his attorney or vice versa.
“Slim to none,” Conan agreed. “Send us what you’ve found. Magnus has government clearances even the president doesn’t have. You’re wondering who’s buried in that mountain, aren’t you?”
“I’m wonderingwhyhe’s buried in that mountain. The land is so worthless that no one has claimed it. I’m still digging around in thirty-year-old records, trying to figure out who these men are. They died before DNA was an identifier, so even if I get some hits in a DNA database, they’re likely to be distant relations like you.” And his digging had apparently triggered Conan’s sister-in-law. Interesting. So maybe he did have family out here. Spying did seem to be a genetic flaw.
“We need objects that once belonged to both men, see if we can pull DNA off them. You got anything of your father’s?”
“Old legal files he worked on, maybe. Not much there. My father’s executor sold off everything and set up a trust with the proceeds. I have a few old books and photograph albums dating back to my infancy but not before. And from what little I’m able to find, we’d have to dig up the mountain for the DNA of whoever, if anyone, is in the mine. Both men lacked immediate family. I’ve been traipsing all over this property, looking for anything resembling a house.”
Conan typed notes into his phone. “I’ll have Nadine poke around. Her family has abilities beyond the normal. Don’t know if they’ll be useful in this case, but digging through internet files is what Nadine does best.”
Jax had people back home who could do that. He missed his team. He even missed Evie and Loretta and their craziness. None of them needed him. He’d arranged it that way. But after weeks of not finding out what he needed to know, he was wondering if he’d made a mistake by leaving. He didn’t see how he could have done it any differently though. He couldn’t live a lie.
But since meeting Evangeline Malcolm Carstairs, he’d stumbled into a world he didn’t recognize. The man he owed for giving him and his sister a home, providing them with educations, and Jax with a job, a man he trusted and respected—had turned out to be a criminal fraud.
Flaky con artists running a psychic shop had turned out to be more honest than his respectable adoptive father and his wealthy business clients. And now Jax was sitting in the desert with a man who practically professed to being a spy and quite possibly related to him in ways he might never know. And this intelligent, knowledgeable spy was married to flakes just like Evie and her family, except they weren’t flakes? They were geeks like his team?
The roar of a powerful engine cut the early evening silence.
His days of meditating with nature were over.
Two
Jax rubbed his nose.“Another of your spy family?”
“Probably not. Maybe the sheriff wants to see who’s haunting the county’s hills.” Conan looked unconcerned.
Jax knew better. While waiting for the inevitable to arrive, he pretended the vehicle heading this way would pass on by into the empty desert. “What does one mine out here? I didn’t think gold was accessible without heavy machinery.”