Craig Collins. She’d seen him on the news with Ava’s parents and Gavin. Kira scrambled to her feet. She snatched her key card off the counter, then rushed out of the room, startling the guard stationed in the hallway between her suite and Brock’s.
“Is he in there?” she asked Joel, striding down the hallway.
“Who, Mr. Logan?”
Not waiting for an answer, she rapped on the door.
Brock answered the door. He wore jeans and an untucked white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“I found it.” She brushed past him into his suite. It was a mess, with legal pads and files blanketing the coffee table. A room-service cart loaded with the remnants of a steak dinner sat beside the desk.
“Found what?” Brock asked. With his uninjured arm, he reached for the TV remote and muted the baseball game.
“The link between Markov and Ava Quinn.” She waved the obituary. “It’s right here in the obit. Ava Collins Quinn, survived by her parents and her brother, Craig Collins.”
Brock’s brows arched. “So?”
“So it’s in the trial materials. Craig Collins is on the witness list for Markov’s trial! He was supposed to testify for the defense, but he never got called to the stand. But his name on the wit list means he was probably at that bar that night when Markov assaulted the guy with the beer bottle, which means he and Craig are friends, which means—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Brock held up his hand. “Slow down. You’re saying Ava Quinn’s brother knows Markov?”
“Yes.” Kira’s heart was thrumming now. She had that adrenaline rush that always accompanied a break in a case. It was the same adrenaline rush that had put a spark in Ollie’s eyes on the night of his murder.
“With all his sketchy business dealings, the last thing Andre Markov wants is investigators linking him to a murder suspect. Or looking at him as a murder suspect.”
Brock rubbed his jaw. “You’re saying Markov was worried that the Quinn trial might put heat on him?”
“Yes. I mean, imagine it. If Gavin’s defense team casts suspicion on Ava’s brother, and Ava’s brother is a known associate of a character like Markov, police might suddenly take a long, hard look at the Markov family business.”
Brock took the obituary from her and frowned as he read it. “You know, I met Craig before at Gavin’s house one time.”
“You did?”
“He looks just like his sister.” He handed back the obituary and sauntered to the minibar. “Want a drink?”
“I’m good. Listen, are you understanding how big this is?”
Brock opened an ice bucket and dropped some cubes into a glass he already had going. He poured bourbon over the ice. “No, I get it.”
Didn’t sound like he did. Kira crossed her arms.
“The age would work, in terms of them being friends,” he said, “but we don’t have proof this is the same Craig Collins on Markov’s witness list. Collins isn’t exactly an unusual name.”
“We’ll get proof.”
Brock lifted an eyebrow skeptically.
“I’ll get it.”
He sank into an armchair. His sipped his drink and looked up at her. “Ollie told me you were like this.”
“Like what?”
The corner of his mouth ticked up. “A pit bull when you got hold of something.”
Ollie had called her a pit bull to Brock? Her heart swelled.
“Sit down. You look tense.”
“I’m fine.” She glanced at her watch, wondering what was taking Jeremy so long. She’d expected him back an hour ago.
“Seems like you could use a drink,” Brock said. “Why don’t you join me? We should relax before tomorrow.” He smiled slightly. “Juries don’t like uptight lawyers. Makes them think we’ve got something to hide.”
“Hmm.”
“You don’t agree?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.”
“Yes, but you’re on the team.” He held up his glass. “Sure I can’t talk you into a drink?”
“Really, I’m fine.”
Truthfully, Kira would have loved a drink, but something about Brock’s demeanor tonight put her off. He looked like he’d already had a few. He had a certain gleam in his eye, and she was suddenly self-conscious about her cutoff shorts and bare feet. He was attracted to her—she’d figured that out already. But he was her employer, and the last thing she needed to be doing was hanging out in his hotel room, tossing back bourbon. If he wanted to get toasted on the eve of a big trial, that was his business, but she wasn’t going there.
He was still watching her. She glanced at the door.
“I need to research this some more, so . . .”
“Let me know what you find,” he said.
She walked to the door.
“Oh, and Kira? We’ve got some pretrial motions in the morning, so jury selection won’t start until after lunch. I won’t need you till then.”
“Got it.”
Kira walked out and nodded at Joel in the hallway.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hi.”
She opened the door to her suite and stopped short. Spread out on the coffee table was a black trash bag. Sitting on it was the fat Rolodex she remembered from Ollie’s desk.
Kira walked over and examined it. She ran her finger over the alphabetical cards, as Ollie must have done a thousand times. Beside the Rolodex was a red pocketknife keychain and an envelope with “Lorraine” scrawled across it in Ollie’s handwriting.
The balcony door slid open, and Erik stepped into the room, followed by Jeremy.
“You found it,” she said.
Jeremy nodded. “Yeah.”
She looked from Jeremy to Erik, then back to Jeremy again. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone showed up while I was there,” Jeremy said. “I think he planned to break in.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. He looked like your guy from the suspect sketch.”
“Wait, you saw him?” Her stomach lurched. She noticed the white bandage above his elbow. “What happened to your arm?”
“I chased after him, and he grazed me.”
She looked from the bandage to Jeremy’s eyes. All the air left her lungs as she realized what he meant.
“You . . . chased after him, and he shot you?”
“He shot at me. He missed.”
Kira stared at him. Her chest tightened. She opened her mouth to say something but clamped it shut again and turned around. She strode into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
Someone had shot him. The man who’d killed Ollie and probably Shelly, too, had shot him.
Kira felt sick and dizzy, both at once. Her heart was racing. Her skin tingled. She looked around, panicked, as tears burned her eyes. She pictured Ollie on the floor in Brock’s house, and she felt something cracking and breaking inside her.
She couldn’t think about it. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and she’d been trying for days.
She stepped into the spacious bathroom and closed the door. She turned the shower on as high as it would go, then she stripped off her clothes and stepped under the spray. Hot water sluiced over her as the floodgates opened and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Why was all this happening? What had Ollie ever done to deserve this? Or Shelly? And now they were gone. Dead. Gunned down by some soulless person who’d taken aim at their lives and squeezed a trigger and blown everything apart.