Ollie, come on. Open your eyes.
He wasn’t moving, wasn’t blinking, wasn’t making a sound. The rest of the house had gone quiet, too. She prayed the shooter wouldn’t come back. Had he fled out the back door? Was he in another wing of the house? Where the hell was Logan? She pictured him dead in the kitchen, and her blood turned cold.
Everything was quiet. Too quiet. The only sound was the frantic pounding of her own heart.
Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
The quiet ended with an earsplitting shriek.
CHAPTER TWO
CHARLOTTE SPEARS pulled up to the curb and surveyed the action. This was not her lucky night. She counted five patrol units and two SUVs, but the CSI van was nowhere in sight.
She got out of the car, tucking a notebook into her pocket just as a media van turned the corner and rolled to a stop beside the police barricade.
“Oh for two,” she murmured.
Charlotte studied the house. The sidewalk leading to the front door had been cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape, so she picked her way up the steep lawn, cursing as her heels sank into the grass. She’d considered going with flats today because of the soggy weather but had ditched the idea. She’d learned to accept the dull pantsuits her job required, but she would never be a gumshoe.
Charlotte paused beside a pair of cement lions and noted the open French doors on the far end of the courtyard. Ken Phan stood in the doorway talking to another uniform.
Okay, so maybe her luck was changing. She liked working with Phan. He had an eye for detail and didn’t have a problem with female authority figures.
Phan looked up and waved her over to the alternative entry point. Something must have gone down near the front door.
“Welcome back, Detective. How was your break?”
“Too short,” Charlotte said, trading her heels for paper booties. She stepped through the French doors into a formal dining room with a table big enough for twenty.
“What have we got?” she asked.
“Shooter rang the bell. Guy who answered took it in the chest, point-blank range,” Phan reported.
She sniffed the air. “Smells like a fraternity party in here.”
“Vic dropped his beer when he got shot. There’s glass everywhere.”
Charlotte stepped closer to the entry foyer, where a crime-scene photographer in a white Tyvek suit was crouched beside a dark red puddle. She snapped a photograph of the blood, then stood and stepped carefully around some shards of brown glass.
“Where’d she come from?” Charlotte asked. “I didn’t see the van outside.”
“They parked around the corner. Street was a mess when we got here. Looks like someone’s having a party down the block.”
Which would add even more chaos to an already hectic scene, no doubt. But maybe they’d catch a break and one of the partygoers had seen something.
Charlotte nodded toward the foyer. “Is our victim the homeowner?”
“No. Homeowner was in the kitchen. He had some kind of confrontation with the perp, who got a couple shots off and left him bleeding on the floor.”
The photographer continued taking pictures from various angles. The puddle was smeared, and it looked like emergency personnel had already managed to muck up the blood evidence.
“Are the victims a couple?” Charlotte asked.
“The vic works for the homeowner.” Phan smiled. “And last I heard, Brock Logan likes women.”
She turned around. “Brock Logan the lawyer?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Guy from the foyer is Logan’s investigator, apparently.”
Charlotte disliked lawyers in general and defense attorneys in particular. She’d never met Logan personally, but she’d gone toe-to-toe with plenty of defense attorneys in court over the years, and it was about as fun as a migraine.
Phan led her through the dining room and into a spacious kitchen. Most of the room had been taped off, including another bloody patch of flooring near the granite cooking island.
“Logan went down there.” Phan nodded at the spot. Once again, there was a great deal of blood. Near a door to the utility room, Charlotte noticed a smear of red on the wall beside a keypad.
“After the shooter fled out the back, Logan managed to get up and set off the alarm,” Phan said.
“What’s the status on him?”
“Both vics were transported to Hermann Hospital. I don’t have an update.”
“Get one.”
Phan stepped away and spoke into his radio as Charlotte studied the scene. The breakfast table was a mess of legal pads and index cards. File folders were strewn across the floor, along with loose papers and a FedEx envelope. Charlotte noted two black power cords plugged into the wall but no computers in sight.
“We’re getting an update,” Phan reported.
“Two laptops stolen?”
“Looks like. But nothing obviously missing in the rest of the house. There’s a bunch of high-end electronics everywhere. He’s got a gold Rolex sitting on the dresser in the master bedroom and a pistol in the top drawer of the nightstand, so not your typical burglary.”
Charlotte didn’t like the sound of that.
“There’s a partial footprint on the FedEx envelope on the floor there,” Charlotte said. “Make sure the techs see it.”
“I did.”
She shook her head. “So this guy just rings the bell, shoots Logan’s PI, comes in here and shoots Logan, then helps himself to some computers?” She glanced through the archway into the entry foyer. “Why’d the PI open the door in the first place?”
“Witness said they were expecting a food delivery.”
Charlotte’s gaze snapped to Phan. “What witness?”
“There was a girl here, too.”
“A child?”
“No, a woman. Sorry.” Phan cleared his throat. “She was here the whole time. The perp shot at her and missed.”
“Is she injured?”
“No.”
“Where the hell is she?”
Kira sat motionless on the patio chair.
Motionless except for her hands, which wouldn’t stop shaking. She clamped them between her knees but couldn’t get them to still.
The scene before her seemed far away. Detached. She was surrounded by people and noises and clipped commands, and she felt like she was on a movie set, watching a cast of characters rush this way and that. She kept thinking someone would jump into the action and yell “Cut!” and it would all be over.
But the people around her weren’t actors. They carried real badges and real guns with real bullets that could tear through flesh.
Kira’s stomach roiled, and she leaned forward, hoping she wouldn’t puke. She glanced at the huddle of cops on the other side of Logan’s patio. The pool lights cast their skin in a bluish hue, and again she felt like she was in some alternative universe. She was sitting on Brock Logan’s patio in a borrowed Harris County EMT sweatshirt with Ollie’s blood all over her jeans.
Police had arrived shortly after the alarm sounded, and Kira didn’t know whether it was her phone call or the security system that summoned them. Maybe both. Ollie had been loaded onto a gurney and whisked away. Logan, too. He’d been conscious, at least, and cops had pelted him with questions as paramedics wheeled him out.
Ollie hadn’t been conscious at all. Hadn’t been moving or even breathing, as far as Kira could tell.