And worse truths. He thought about the contents of the safe-deposit box, swallowing hard at the sudden burn of bile in his throat. He’d written down everything he’d ever been told, everything he’d overheard or witnessed. He’d documented every sin the Founding Elders had ever committed, but those sins weren’t what had him sweating right now.

He’d kept a running tally of every penny the founders shared. Pastor showed them the earnings reports twice a year, and each time Ephraim made notes of the numbers as soon as he was out of Pastor’s sight. If Mercy gave that key to the cops, they’d know exactly what Eden was worth.

The money was safely hidden in offshore accounts for the moment, but if there was one thing he’d learned from DJ over the years, it was that the Feds were capable of tracking nearly anything with their fancy computers. And now the Feds knew where to look. If Mercy had gotten a key from Ephraim’s mother, she’d already given it to either her detective boyfriend or her brother.

Gideon. The Fed. He was behind this, Ephraim was certain.

If they’d visited his mother, they were probably already tracking how Ephraim paid for her care. They’d find the bank accounts and would inevitably recognize Frutuoso for an Eden account once they figured out that the company dealt in “olive oil and pomegranates.”

Stupid Pastor. The man thought he was so damn clever. Naming the company “fruitful.” It was bad enough that Pastor had chosen his name because “Ephraim” meant “fruitful.” Ephraim had been only seventeen years old and full of himself, it was true. And yeah, he’d fucked the fourteen-year-old granddaughter of Doc, the oldest Founding Elder, but so what? The old man was long dead now, the first of all of them to die, so he didn’t care anymore. Plus, the girl had wanted it. And Ephraim had married her when she’d shown up pregnant.

Not like he’d had a choice. But marriage was his punishment, as was the name change to Ephraim. It was a taunt, a constant reminder that he’d gotten Doc’s granddaughter preggo. Because Pastor was a prick—a prick who thought he was too damn smart to ever get caught.

But Mercy was smart and so was Gideon. They’d figure out that the bank account was important, and who knew how long it would take them to trace the money back to the offshore Eden accounts?

I need to get that cash before the Feds do.

But the money wasn’t even the scariest thing. That would be the maps he’d added to the safe-deposit box every time Eden moved. He wasn’t sure what the other founders had included in their “fail-safe boxes,” but Ephraim’s approach was scorched earth, all the way. If one of the fuckers had killed him, his mother would have opened his box and found every location Eden had ever settled.

She’d find the locations of their product stashes—pot, shrooms, opioids. And the cash that DJ collected every week that he took a drug shipment to his contacts. DJ would deposit it periodically into banks in either Santa Rosa, Sacramento, or San Francisco, but never often and never in the same bank. Then Pastor would move it into the main offshore account, which the man controlled with an iron fist.