Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 01 - A Deadly Change of Course--Plan B Read Online Free PDF

to get into my tool box and returned with the Wonder Bar.  I strategically placed it under the latch and gave it a good yank.  Bingo.  The container was unlocked —and now completely useless as a brief case. 
    I lifted the lid.  My mouth fell open, and I began to hyperventilate.  I expected to find business papers, brochures, and if I was lucky, a cell phone or a really nice calculator.  What I didn’t expect to find was cash — lots of cash.  Row after row of bundled hundred-dollar bills.   My knees went weak and I collapsed in the chair.
    “My God.   How much money is that?”  I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.  I just stared in amazement.  Why would someone put that much money in a self-storage unit?  And why, for God’s sake, would they let it be auctioned off for lack of payment?  Slowly, I reached for the case and picked up one of the bundles.  I started counting.  I had to start over four times and finally concluded that the bundle contained five hundred bills, each of them being of the one-hundred-dollar denomination.  That one bundle amounted to fifty thousand dollars.  I looked back at the case.  There were nine more bundles identical to that one.  My heart raced and I felt faint.  That was a half-million dollars sitting there on my kitchen table.  I pinched myself and started looking around for Tom Selleck —it had to be a dream.
    “Okay.  Calm down, Devonie ,” I told myself.  I got my breathing under control and replaced the bundle of bills.  I checked the pockets in the lid of the case.  There was something tucked in the pouch —a year-old airline ticket to Geneva.  The storage unit account had to be delinquent for at least a year before they would auction it off — according to the manager of the complex.  Whoever the money belonged to must have come to some horrible demise at about the time that ticket was purchased.  No one still breathing would let a half-million dollars go.  Maybe the person was in prison and couldn’t get to the money before he was locked up .  No.  He would have arranged for someone to get the money before he’d lose it.  He must have been dead — that was the only logical explanation.
    I checked the pockets for more information.  I found a passport for a Robert Allen Kephart .  He appeared in the photo to be in his mid-forties.  His sandy blonde hair and mustache complimented a pair of deep hazel-blue eyes.  He had that younger Robert Redford look — the rugged outdoorsy type.  I removed the only other thing I could find in the case — a small notepad.  I tried to decipher a name scribbled on the first page, but the writing proved to be illegible.  It looked like Carl Hobbs or Hebbs , but I couldn’t be sure.  Below that, in clear print, the words PAID IN FULL were underlined in bold ink.  A hundred scenarios passed through my mind as to where that money had come from, and none of them even slightly resembled anything legal.  I doubted it was anyone’s bingo winnings, or the proceeds from the sale of a car.  I glanced suspiciously at the other two brief cases — afraid to think what might be in them.
    I didn’t even bother trying to pick the lock on the next case.  I just applied the Wonder Bar and opened it.  Any slight hope I might have had that the money was not part of some illegal activity was shattered when I lifted the lid.  The case was specifically designed to hold a gun, a very large gun, with several attachments.  I was not familiar with firearms or their related paraphernalia, but from what I’d seen in the movies, I was looking at a pretty high tech scope and a silencer.  Also in the case, I found ammunition and a pair of gloves.
    What have I gotten myself into? I thought.  I had a feeling life as I knew it would not be the same after that day .
    The third case was not locked.  It contained a toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, a shaving kit, a new light blue polo shirt, and a clean pair of boxers