Jake didn’t hang around to find out. Moving into the elevator corridor, he pressed a button, and one of the doors immediately opened. Rushing inside, Jake quickly punched the button for the thirtieth floor. But before the doors fully shut, someone else reached the elevator and stuck a hand in to block it. A fortysomething man in black slacks and a white dress shirt entered. He gave a quick nod at Jake, turned, and pressed the button for the twenty-fourth floor. The doors shut, and the elevator started to ascend.
“You work for Kingston Financial?” the guy asked. He was staring at Jake in the mirrored reflection of the elevator doors.
“What’s that?” Jake asked, buying time to sort out a good answer.
The guy nodded at the elevator buttons. “Noticed you’re headed up to the Kingston floor. I know a lot of the guys who work there.”
“Oh, yeah. Uh, just started there last week.”
“I didn’t think they were hiring right now. Which section?”
Jake had no idea how to address that. “Foreign investments.”
The guy gave him an odd look. “Gotcha.”
Jake stared down at his hands, avoiding eye contact. He hoped that answer was sufficient because that was all he could come up with in the moment. The elevator stopped on the twenty-fourth floor.
“Well, tell Andy Reyes I said hey,” the guy said, before exiting.
“Will do. Have a good one.”
Jake had no idea who Andy Reyes was. But he was glad to get rid of that guy. The less interaction he had right now, the better. He just wanted to get in and out of Kingston Financial as quickly as possible. When the doors opened on the thirtieth floor, Jake eased out into the hallway. The glass doors of Kingston Financial stood in front of him. On the wall beside the doors was both a card-key scanner and a keypad. Jake pulled the piece of scrap paper where he’d written down Sarah’s office code from his front pocket. Would the firm have canceled her security access after she’d died? Jake reached up, carefully typed in the six-digit code from the paper. He exhaled when a little red light on the keypad shifted to green. Reaching over, he pulled on one of the glass doors. It swung open easily, with no alarms going off. He was inside a moment later.
The name of the firm was emboldened from behind in bright lights on a white stone wall in front of him. There was a luxurious sitting area to his left with numerous leather sofas and chairs. The receptionist station currently sat empty. Jake stepped into the lobby, paused to listen. He didn’t hear anything from the various hallways. If someone was working this Sunday, they were deeper in the bowels of the office. Jake quickly stepped behind the reception counter and began looking around for a company contact list. He found a laminated list sitting under a keyboard by the computer. He ran his finger down the list searching for Beth Spiller. Bingo. He found her. Administrative assistant, special events. Beside her name was a phone extension. Picking up the reception phone, Jake pressed the extension and then listened. A phone began to ring down one of the hallways. Setting the phone on the counter without hanging up, Jake rushed down the hallway while trying to find the location of the ring. There were nice offices on the outside of the hallway and cubicles on the inside. The ringing was coming from one of the cubicles. But it stopped before he could locate the exact one. Hurrying back to the reception counter, he did the same exercise and again raced back down the hallway.
This time, he found the right cubicle before the ringing stopped. There was an L-shaped computer station with a short stack of metal bookshelves and a couple of short file cabinets. Jake sat in the desk chair, began searching the desktop. He immediately spotted a photo of a very attractive young blonde woman in a frame on the desktop. Was that Beth? She was squeezed in next to another young woman at a restaurant somewhere.
But it was another photo frame right next to it that really got his attention. There were two pictures in separate slots. The left picture was of two young kids, a girl and a boy, both wearing matching Christmas pajamas. The young girl was clearly Beth as a child. The picture on the right was present-day Beth with her arm wrapped around a guy who Jake was certain was Eddie Cowens. Jake’s eyes went back and forth between the two pictures. Eddie was definitely the young boy in the picture on the left. Beth and Eddie must be brother and sister, even though they didn’t share the same last name.
Jake began opening desk drawers to see if he could find Beth’s address listed on anything. The first two drawers were nothing but office supplies. But the second drawer also contained something that made him pause. A small strip of photos taken at a photo booth somewhere. Beth was in the booth with Steve Kingston. And the fact that they were kissing on the lips in the bottom shot told him everything he needed to know. Steve was having an affair with Beth. That was the connecting point. Had Steve gotten Beth’s brother to eliminate his potential exposure for stealing millions from the company? Or were Beth and her brother acting independently from Steve? The fact that Steve was now dead left him thinking the latter—but then why would Steve write a $50,000 check to Beth on the same day he was killed?