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

passport, shaking her head. “What have
you gotten me into, Jack?”
    Almost fearfully, Zoe reached back
up and felt around inside the rest of the cover. Sure enough, on the other side
there was another passport, this one with a woman’s picture. Irena Anna
Whitehead. In her thirties, she had dark hair, cut in a shoulder-length bob,
which framed her pale face. She wore severe rectangular dark-framed glasses and
had a wide face and a delicate mouth. Not a beautiful face, but striking. There
was a confidence that showed through even in the personality-erasing identity
photo.
    Still perched on the top of the
ladder, Zoe repositioned her hip and leaned against the top step of the ladder.
Her whole world had been thrown out of sync in the last twenty-four hours, and
she felt a little unsteady. Why did this passport for Brian have Jack’s
picture? Who was Irena? Why did Jack have her passport? Were the passports
fakes?
    They certainly looked authentic.
When she angled the page with the photo to the light, a film of embossed seals
glittered. She made sure there was nothing else unusual inside the cover of the
ceiling fan, then replaced it. It slid easily into the track this time. She
quickly replaced the screws then scrambled down the ladder. Downstairs in her
room, she pulled open her top dresser drawer and pushed aside a tangle of
jewelry along with a pile of notebooks. She found her passport under a twist of
scarves. She’d only used it once, for Helen’s destination wedding in Cancun.
    Zoe compared the passports and
couldn’t see any difference between the two she’d found in the ceiling fan and
hers, except that the passports for “Brian” and “Irena” had never been used.
Zoe stacked all three passports and tapped them against her chin. Why have a
passport with a name other than your own? A thought struck her, and she felt as
if she’d been punched in the gut. What if Jack wasn’t his real name—what if it
was Brian? She felt slightly sick at the thought. Had he deceived her for
years? Who was he? And this Irena person, who was she?
    Zoe opened the Brian passport. No
one looks good in their passport photo, but Jack’s squared off jaw and blue
eyes insured that he looked passable, despite the horrible lighting that gave
his skin a yellow cast. His hair was different, longer around the ears, and it
was a bit darker than it was now. He looked...younger, more fresh-faced and eager
than he did now. The issue date of the passport was four years ago. What had he
been doing four years ago?
    She sat down on the edge of the
bed and looked up at the ceiling. Jack had never been one to talk about his
past. She hadn’t pressed. His dad died during his senior year of college. His
mom had been fighting cancer for years and died a year later, so Zoe had always
assumed that talking about his past was too painful.
    Jack had graduated from college in
Georgia with an engineering degree, then gone to work for a pharmaceutical
company right out of college, but he’d hated it. She squinted up at the corner
of the room. What had he said? Something about a friend from school had helped
him get a federal job. He’d moved to D.C. and lived in a condo in Georgetown,
he’d said. Cubicle work, he’d called it. Boring. So boring that he’d quit after
a few years and put every penny he had into the GRS with Connor. Had he ever
traveled outside the U.S.? And why did he have a passport for Irena?
    “You’re not going to get any
answers sitting here,” she muttered to herself and went to get the ladder.
There were three more ceiling fans in the house. By the time she’d worked her
way downstairs to the flea market room, she’d found two more thick rolls of
cash. Her short nap had rejuvenated her, and she was wide-awake, almost jittery,
as she climbed down the ladder into the debris of the flea market room after
replacing the cover of the last ceiling fan.
    She surveyed the chaos, thinking
this would be a great place to hide something.