Dani called up FBI headquarters and got patched through to a member on her team.
“I need you to get me an address ASAP. Nelson Wyatt.”
Minutes later, she had it. The pin on her map app told her Nelson Wyatt lived only two miles away from Steve’s house. All the rich people lived around this part of town. Dani started her Mazda and took off. She was pulling up to a massive house sitting along Lake Austin about five minutes later. Before she had a chance to knock on the front door and introduce herself, she spotted the same white Range Rover she’d seen parked in the airport hangar security video earlier pulling out of the driveway. Nelson Wyatt was behind the steering wheel. And he was in a hurry.
Dani did a quick U-turn and followed. She tried to strategize how to approach the man to get the necessary information out of him. Threats would likely get her nowhere. Men like Wyatt made careers out of legally keeping secrets for wealthy clients.
She followed the Range Rover into Zilker Park and trailed at a distance until he finally came to a stop in a small empty parking lot near the sand volleyball courts. Dani pulled off the park road and watched from a distance for a moment. Was he going for a run on the nearby trails? The lawyer just sat in his car and waited. She got her answer two minutes later when a sleek black Bentley pulled into the same parking lot and parked right next to the Range Rover. Wyatt climbed out of his vehicle. Dani cursed when the driver of the other vehicle also got out. Lars Kingston.
She watched as the two men huddled closely together and began engaging in an animated conversation. Dani’s mind began racing. Could Lars have hired Logan Gervais? He had to be involved. It was too much of a coincidence for these two men to be meeting privately today unless it was connected to Gervais. But why? While Lars clearly disliked his former son-in-law, why would he hire a hit man to kill him under these crazy circumstances? Was he convinced Jake had killed his granddaughter last night and simply taking matters into his own hands? Powerful and wealthy people often played by their own rules.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jake sat in his truck and tried to regroup somehow from his encounter with both Eddie Cowens and Dani after finding his brother-in-law Steve shot dead in his office. Eddie must have been the one who’d shot him. Why? Jake had been working under the presumption that Steve was behind everything that had happened to Sarah and Piper. Was he wrong? Or was he right, and things had somehow gone sideways between Steve and Eddie?
Jake looked down and noticed that his fingers were trembling. He couldn’t squelch the growing fear inside that—because of his encounter at Steve’s house—Eddie might panic and make a devastating move with Piper. Their words from the phone call last night about what they’d do to Piper if police got too close echoed in his mind: Then we do what we gotta do with her. Was Eddie now going to head straight back to wherever they had Piper and kill her? Was she already dead? Maybe he should’ve told Dani the truth. Maybe she could’ve somehow stepped in and done something to find Piper. But he was terrified that telling Dani the truth would somehow backfire on him.
Jake thought about Beth Spiller, the name he’d found in Steve’s checkbook. He had to find her. Because he’d tossed his burner phone, he had no current access to the internet to search for her. Jake still had Sarah’s old day planner with him, which listed her security codes for the offices of Kingston Financial. It was Sunday afternoon. The office was probably empty. Could he possibly find contact information for Beth Spiller inside the office?
Starting up the truck, Jake drove into downtown proper and found an open parking spot near 600 Congress, a high-rise office building in the heart of Austin’s financial district. Kingston Financial occupied the entire thirtieth floor. Sarah’s mother had decorated the office, and it dripped with the same rich luxury of their personal residence. An international design magazine had even run a feature on the office space a few years ago. Jake put the fake black-rimmed glasses back on, along with the gray cotton jacket and brown ski cap. Then he got out of the truck, took a few quick glances around for any signs of police, and headed straight up the sidewalk for the glass front doors of the building. He entered the spacious lobby, which was mostly empty. Two security guards sat behind a booth over to his right. Jake moved straight for the elevators, trying to look purposeful, like he belonged, and it was normal for him to stop by the office on a Sunday. Out of his peripheral vision, he could feel one of the security guards’ eyes on him. Was it just casual monitoring like the guard would do with anyone who came to the building? Or was it more?