Kira deposited her messenger bag on a chair. “This place stinks,” she muttered.
The office smelled like a combination of mildew and spoiled shrimp, and Kira held her nose as she stepped around Ollie’s big metal desk. All the drawers had been dumped, and the floor was blanketed in papers and office supplies. She crouched beside a pile of pens and legal pads, looking for any sticky notes where Ollie might have jotted his passwords. She didn’t find any, and she moved to the credenza, where more drawers had been yanked out. The carpet squished under her feet. She stepped around the toppled file cabinet and found Ollie’s forty-gallon fish tank lying on its side. Half a dozen dead goldfish littered the carpet.
“Those bastards.” She knelt beside the tank. The filter had formed a dam, blocking several inches of water from escaping, and a tiny orange fish darted about in the pool that remained.
“I thought the police pried their way in,” Jeremy said.
Kira stood up and looked at him. He was in the doorway, examining the hinges.
“They told me the landlord met them here with a key,” she said.
“No sign of forced entry.”
Kira stared at him for a moment before realizing what he was getting at.
“None at all?” She stepped to the door and examined it. No visible damage. The only marks on it were black smudges of fingerprint dust left behind by police.
“Maybe the gunman swiped Ollie’s keys from Logan’s house when he took the phones and computers,” Kira said.
Jeremy grunted a response, still examining the door.
She picked her way across the room, grabbing a bottle of sweet tea that had rolled under a chair. She twisted the top off as she stepped into the cramped bathroom at the back of the office. Ollie had complained that the bathroom had a leaky ceiling and temperamental plumbing, but because it was attached to the office, the landlord charged him the “executive suite” rate.
She glanced around the space now, cringing at the slime along the baseboards and the moldy tile grout. Someone had taken the lid off the toilet and searched the tank.
“Anything missing?” Jeremy asked from the other room.
“Hard to tell. I noticed his CPU’s gone, but I don’t know what else.”
She poured the tea down the sink and then rinsed the bottle.
“What about files?” Jeremy asked. He was standing near an air vent now, examining the metal cover that someone had loosened with a screwdriver. Whoever had searched this place had come prepared.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Here, help me with this, will you?”
She set the bottle on the desk and then lifted the fish tank. Even almost empty, it was heavy.
Jeremy took the tank from her. “Now I see why it stinks.”
“Pour him in here.”
Jeremy looked at her. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
He tipped the tank, sending pebbles and plastic seaweed sliding as water streamed into the bottle. The fish remained behind, flapping and flailing, and Kira carefully pinched him by the tail and dropped him into the bottle.
Jeremy set the tank down and stepped over to a framed picture that had been pulled off the wall and tossed onto the sofa. It was a copy of the front page of the Houston Chronicle the morning after the Astros won the World Series for the first time in franchise history.
A hard lump rose in Kira’s throat.
Jeremy picked up the picture. The glass was smashed, and the paper backing had been shredded by someone obviously searching for something.
“He was a ’Stros fan?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah.”
She turned away, settling her attention on the file cabinet. The folders had been pulled out and emptied, and she crouched down to try to make sense of the mess. They weren’t case files. Ollie was careful not to keep paper copies of stuff like that. Mostly, it looked like business records—contracts, utility bills, his lease agreement. She combed through the heap, sorting it into stacks, although she wasn’t sure what purpose that served at this point. Most of this stuff would probably end up in the trash. Would Ollie’s daughter have to comb through it all? Kira could only imagine how painful it would be for her to see her father’s office this way.
A commotion sounded in the hall, and Kira whirled around.
“Hey!” a voice yelled.
“What the—” Kira rushed through the door to find Jeremy pushing a man against the wall and pinning his arm behind him. Jeremy yanked a big black pistol from the back of the man’s jeans.
“State your name,” Jeremy ordered, tucking the gun into his waistband.
“Hey, fuck off. I work here.”
“Let him go,” Kira said, and the man looked over his shoulder at her.
“You know this guy?” Jeremy asked.
“Emilio Sanchez from next door.”
“Jesus, Kira. What the fuck?”
Jeremy let the man go, and he turned around, red-faced. Emilio was short and bulky and had a thick black mustache. Jeremy was a foot taller, but that didn’t stop Emilio from glaring up at him.
“What the fuck?” he repeated, looking at Kira.
“We hired security,” she said.
“Who did?”
“Logan and Locke. You heard about Ollie?”
“Yeah.” Emilio’s expression softened. “I heard. Any arrests yet?”
“No. Jeremy, this is Emilio Sanchez, the business owner next door.”
“Twenty-four-hour bail bonds.” Emilio pulled a business card from his pocket and held it out, all hostility gone. “Hey, can I get my gun back?”
Jeremy darted Kira a look and then returned the weapon. Emilio stuffed it into the back of his pants as he craned his neck to see around Kira into Ollie’s office.
“Shit, that’s a mess. Did they totally clean him out?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“The police came by my place yesterday. We didn’t hear the break-in, but they wanted a look at our surveillance tapes.”
“You turn them over?”
“Sure. Why not? I try to keep things friendly with those guys.”
Kira’s phone chimed from Ollie’s office, and she picked her way through the debris to her bag. She dug the phone out, glanced at the number, and muttered a curse before answering.
“Kira Vance.”
“Please hold for Mr. Logan.”
It was Bev’s voice, and Kira felt a jolt of panic as she checked her watch.
“Hey, Kira, what have you got?”
She took a deep breath. “Some interesting developments.”
“Good. We’re having a working session at six. I need you there with an update on Ollie.”
“I’m working on it. Some things are still unclear at this point, and—”
“Be there at six, or you’re off the case.” He paused. “That clear enough?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Brock Logan’s mansion was no longer a base of operations. While his house was being cleaned up, he’d moved to the Metropolitan Hotel and rented a suite for himself, plus an adjoining one for his security team.
Jeremy stepped into the living room, where luxury furniture had been pushed against a wall to make room for a table covered in computers and surveillance equipment. Erik Morgan stood there now, arms crossed as he monitored footage of the hallway, as well as the meeting taking place in the living room next door. Like Jeremy and Liam, Erik was a former Marine. He had done a stint in the secret service before Liam recruited him to Wolfe Sec.
“How’s the principal?” Jeremy asked him, tossing his jacket over a chair. Jeremy hated the suit-and-tie thing, but with corporate clients, it was part of the deal.