Jake’s initial plan was to go straight up to the front door and just bang on it. When Steve answered, he’d make a bold maneuver inside and abruptly address his brother-in-law before the man could make any sudden moves. Jake was much bigger and stronger than Steve. Unless his brother-in-law had a gun on him, Jake knew he could physically manhandle him. But when he got to the glass front door, he found it cracked open two feet. Why? Then Jake looked through the glass and spotted a vase of flowers shattered on the hardwood floor right next to an entry table. He squinted. Next to the vase were red streaks on the floor that led down a hallway. Jake moved inside the house, listened. He could hear a TV on down the same hallway. Sounded like a football game. Was it coming from Steve’s office? Jake knew the house well. He’d come here often over the years. He knelt, closely examined the red streaks, quietly cursed. Blood. He looked back at the broken vase on the floor and at the front door left open. Whose blood? What had happened? And what was he about to discover?
Jake moved cautiously down the hallway toward Steve’s office. While he could hear the TV announcers, Jake heard nothing else in the house. Except maybe the beating of his own heart in his chest. He passed a guest bathroom on his left and then a hallway that he knew led to bedrooms in the back of the house. But the red streaks on the floor continued to the corner office. Jake stepped inside the office with trepidation. He cursed again. Steve was lying facedown on the hardwood floor behind his desk with both of his arms spread out in front of him. His brother-in-law wasn’t moving. Blood was pooling up all around his body. Jake raced over to Steve, pulled on his shoulder to turn him over. The man was limp. The front of his brother-in-law’s white polo shirt was soaked in red and completely mangled. Steve was dead. Someone had shot him. Was that someone still here? Jake felt panic grip him. This was not at all what he’d expected to find when he got here.
If Steve was the person behind all this, why was he dead? Why had someone killed him? Jake had to get out of there. He stood but then glanced down at the desktop, which was covered in various files and paperwork. He began rummaging through all the material just to see if he could find anything that might be connected to his situation. Most of it looked like standard investment printouts and spreadsheets. Then he spotted a checkbook beneath one of the papers. Grabbing it, Jake opened it and began scanning the carbon copy receipts. He stopped and stared wide-eyed at the last check written in the book. It was dated today, for $50,000, and made out to someone named Beth Spiller. It had to be the same Beth mentioned in the phone call he’d overheard last night. Fifty thousand dollars? That was a hell of a lot of money. Who was she? Eddie Cowens had mentioned on the phone call from Piper’s phone something about Beth and her boss. Could Beth work for Steve at Kingston Financial?
Jake froze when he heard movement from somewhere else in the house. It sounded like the bumping of a chair on the hardwood floor. Then a man cursed.
THIRTY-TWO
Dani parked on the curb outside Steve Kingston’s house. She dialed his phone number and again listened to his voice mail greeting. He had not responded to any of her urgent messages, so she’d decided to try to track him down. She wanted to get more information about the unidentified man in the photo that Carl Kingston had texted over to her. Getting out of her vehicle, she walked up the path toward the front door. That’s when she noticed the glass door was pushed open. A piece of black duct tape covered the doorbell security camera. Peering inside, she noticed a broken vase of flowers on the floor in the foyer along with red streaks on the floor. She felt her adrenaline spike. She recognized the red streaks and immediately pulled out her gun. Stepping inside the home, Dani paused to listen. She could hear a TV on somewhere in the house. It sounded like it was coming from a hallway to her right—the same direction as the blood streaks on the floor.
“Hello? Anyone home?” Dani called out. Even with her suspicions, she wanted to be careful to not enter a home uninvited and get herself into trouble. “Mr. Kingston, this is Special Agent Dani Nolan with the FBI. May we talk for a moment?”
She stood there a second and listened. No response. She glanced over and took in the impressive windows in the main living room that looked out over a pool. There was no one outside on the back patio. Then she began to step down the hallway toward where she could hear the TV, careful to avoid the blood on the floor.
She paused outside the room with the TV. “Hello? Mr. Kingston?”
Still no response. She turned the corner, gun ready. That’s when she saw Steve on his back on the floor with blood everywhere. His eyes were open but glazed over. She guessed he’d been shot multiple times in the chest. Someone had dragged him into this room. How long ago? Based on the pooling of the blood, she presumed it had just happened. Was the shooter still in the house? Dani rushed out of the office and into the hallway. She began searching one room at a time, making sharp motions, gun prepared to fire. She quickly cleared a section of bedrooms and bathrooms in the back corner of the house. But then she suddenly heard a door open and shut in the main living room.