The Chain of Lies

CHAPTER 2



“Let’s see…four fifteen, four sixteen, four seventeen,” Emily muttered as she read the numbers on the door to each of the outdoor storage lockers. “Here it is, four eighteen.”

Nervously anticipating what might be behind it, she stood for a moment, staring at the door. Then with a held breath, she shoved the brass key into the padlock and exhaled loudly when it fit perfectly.

She twisted the key and the lock slipped a bit as it released. A wave of excitement poured through her as she unhooked the lock from the metal loop and swung the door open.

Exposed before her was a small storage area, maybe five feet wide and twelve feet deep. She had brought a six-inch pocket flashlight, suspecting there may be no lights. It proved useful toward the back of the unit, because the bright sunshine only illuminated the space closest to the entrance.

Emily stepped in and flashed the narrow beam around. Along one wall were several steel shelving units, three shelves high, each one holding white cardboard banker boxes. She stared at the boxes. What could Evan possibly have been hiding in them?

Several months ago, when she discovered the first clue that he was not who he said he was, she had been devastated. They had been married for five years and she’d thought they were blissfully happy. But months after his death, she began to uncover evidence that he was someone else entirely. Rather than a private investigator, she had eventually learned that he was a CIA operative with a vast array of secrets.

After many tears, and sleepless nights, she had finally gotten control of her emotions and accepted that his lies were to protect her. With Colin’s help, and the aid of her close friends, she was able to move on from her grief, but the mystery of who killed her husband still hung over her. Emily would never be able to completely close the door on that CHAPTER of her life, and fully commit herself to a new relationship, until the mystery of Evan’s murder was solved.

With the flashlight poised in one hand, she pulled the snugly fitting lid off one of the boxes with the other, causing a faint cloud of dust to waft up. She batted at the air to clear the dust and peeked into the box.

Fingering through the old files and papers, she hoped she wouldn’t have to rummage through every single document in each and every box before she would discover anything of value—fortunately, there were only seven of them.

Emily wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find in this storage place, but a bunch of boring-looking file boxes was definitely not it. Unlike Evan’s secret safe deposit box that was filled with fake passports and bundles of cash, along with a suspicious gun, these boxes only seemed to contain files, papers, and old photos.

No matter what lay in the boxes, though, they had to contain something Evan didn’t want anyone else to see. So, for the next two hours, she searched through the boxes, folder by folder, page by page.

Most of the documents looked like photocopies, as if Evan had copied them to keep a set of his own files on his CIA assignments. She wondered why he felt he needed protection—or was he searching for proof of something? Documentation to back up his actions, maybe?

Along with the copied documents, there were photos of locations and people, as if he had snapped the candid shots as his target was meeting with someone, or clandestine pictures showing what his mark was up to.

Emily searched for more photos of the mysterious brunette—the one standing with Evan in the single snapshot kept hidden in his safe deposit box—but she found none. Her identity had plagued Emily since the first time she’d discovered the picture of this woman snuggled in Evan’s arms.

Digging for another picture of her husband with the dark-haired beauty was now more out of curiosity than anything else. After reading the hidden note she had found from Evan, she knew the woman had been a girlfriend, accidentally killed in the crossfire during a shootout in which Evan was involved.

But why did he keep only that photo—the photo of the two of them—hidden in the safe deposit box? Why not here with the others?

After spending a couple of hours methodically pouring over the contents of a few of the boxes, she realized it was time to take Maggie and Molly to the airport. As she was sticking some files back into one of the boxes, a small, black-leather notebook slipped out from between a couple of the folders and smacked onto the cement floor.

“How did I miss that?”

Emily crouched down and picked it up. She flipped through it, recognizing the handwriting as Evan’s. It was an address book with cryptic names and numbers written in it.

She read a few of the names, but then her gaze landed on an entry that said, Handler, Izzy, with a phone number. Was Handler someone’s name or was it someone’s position?

Izzy.

Suddenly, she recalled Evan referring to Isabel as Izzy. Was Isabel’s maiden name Handler? Or was Evan noting that Izzy was his CIA handler, writing that information in the book as if that was the person’s full name—Izzy Handler—to throw anyone who got possession of this book off the track. Or was it an alias? Or code?

Maybe she should take the boxes back to her house? Then Emily’s breath caught in her throat. The person in the black sedan, possibly a BMW, could very likely be the one who had broken into her home, and maybe they were looking for something in these boxes, like this book.

Giving her head a shake for being temporarily oblivious to the mysterious stalker, Emily peeked out of the storage unit to see if anyone was watching her now. She glanced around but saw no one.

She didn’t have any more time to look through the black book at the moment. Maggie and Molly would be waiting for her. So she tucked the book, and the flashlight, in her purse for later. She’d have to give the Izzy question some more thought.