Free Elusive (On The Run Book #1) by Sara Rosett Page A

yesterday. The phone number they had on file was out-of-service, and
they wanted Jack to contact them right away.
    Zoe hoped he wasn’t overdrawn
because there was no way she could cover his account and hers, too. She chewed
her bottom lip for a moment, undecided. Then she opened a web browser page.
She’d just check his bank account and see what had happened. There were a
couple of places she knew Jack jotted down login information for his online
accounts. She checked his desk drawer. No helpful scraps of paper. She lifted
the lamp with her left hand.
    “Bingo.” She tilted the lamp so
she could read the sticky note attached to the bottom and typed in the numbers.
    She was lowering the lamp back to
the desk when Jack’s bank account loaded and the screen filled with numbers.
She lost her grip, and the lamp banged down to the desk with a crack. She
hardly noticed because all her attention was focused on the computer. The bank
balance was huge. Enormous, in fact.
So
many zeros
.
    Where did Jack get that much
money? And if he had that much money, why did he make his portion of the
mortgage payment five days late last month? Heck, with that balance he could
pay off the house. The majority of the money had been deposited yesterday.
Before the deposit, the account balance was six hundred dollars and ninety-two
cents. Now that looked more normal, Zoe thought. What was going on? She clicked
on the deposit to get the details on where it came from, but she only got an
error.
    She swiveled the chair back and
forth, lost in thought. Had Jack been lying to her about money? She stared at
the bank balance, counting the zeros to make sure she was actually seeing what
she thought she was seeing. Yep, she was. Twelve million dollars. Twelve
million
dollars.
    What would it be like to have that
much money? There would be no worries about paying the bills—any bills—that was
for sure. For just a second, she thought about transferring a couple hundred
dollars into her checking account, but almost instantly, she shook her head—she
couldn’t do it. It would be a stupid thing to do and flat out wrong. Besides,
it had to be a mistake—one of those crazy computer things that happen once in a
blue moon. There was no way Jack had twelve million dollars.
    She quickly closed the lid of the
laptop and stood up. Another thing to add to her list—call the bank. Too late
to do it today. Would they even talk to her? It wasn’t her account, after all.
Even though she also banked there, she doubted they would give her any
information about Jack’s account.
    She reached for the lamp that was
now in two pieces. The base had completely broken off from the stand. There was
no way to fix it, she realized, as she examined the break. There was something
in the base, some sort of paper.
    She could just see the edge of it
through the hole where the stand attached to the base. She put down the stand
and tried to work the paper out of the base with her finger, but the hole was
too small. She flipped the base over and examined the bottom. Jack’s login paper
was attached to the thick felt glued on the base. She pried a corner away and a
fat roll of twenties encircled with a rubber band fell into her hand and
another thumped onto the desk. She stared at them for moment, then ran her
finger over the edge of the bills.
    They were
all
twenties. She had no idea
how much money she was holding, but it had to be several hundred dollars.
    “Whoa,” Zoe whispered. Had she
ever actually touched this much money? She rubbed her finger across the edge of
the bills again and slowly turned in a circle, trying to take in the room with
a different perspective. Had she known Jack at all? He had never been one to
hide money—at least, she didn’t think he’d been like that. As her gaze ran over
the master bath, she stopped, and focused on the shiny silver towel rack, just
visible through the doorway.
    Slowly, she put the lamp base down
on the desk with the two rolls of