“So you never met this man?”

“No.”

Tess reminded herself Brayden was a lawyer. And apparently a damn good one.

“Do you know a man named Alec Sheppard?”

“Another one? Who are all these people? No I don’t know him!”

“Alec Sheppard. Are you sure you’ve never heard that name? Maybe when you were in Atlanta?”

Brayden McConnell looked at her as if she were nuts. “Atlanta. Next I suppose you’re going to say I live on the North Pole. You come in here asking me all this crap when I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Well here’s something I want to know. If you’re going to keep asking me stuff, why don’t you tell me what it’s all about? And why don’t you use your pull with Laguna Beach PD to get some answers?” Brayden pulled her daughter onto her lap and held her as if she were afraid Tess would grab her any minute.

Tess knew when she was being sandbagged.

Time to give up—for now. Tess stood. “Thank you for your time.”

“No problem.”

Seriously?

Tess was relieved when the door closed behind her—and glad to get out from under.

Score one for Brayden DeKoven McConnell and her daughter, Aurora.

Lawyers of the year.

Tess positioned herself about seven homes up the street, backing the SUV into a driveway and killing her lights. A large palo verde tree partially screened her. There was only one way out of the neighborhood.

She waited.

A half hour went by. She did not hear a garage door roll up. She did not see taillights back out. No car came by. Another hour. Same thing. She waited another half hour. Nobody drove into the neighborhood.

Brayden wasn’t going anywhere. She had not been spooked.

Tess started up the engine, put the car in gear, and headed down out of Tucson to the freeway toward home.

She felt as if she’d been put through the wringer. She had a bad feeling about Brayden. Not just that she was good at barrage tactics, but because there was one moment when Tess sensed something besides just good tactics.

Tess had kept her eyes on Brayden’s face every moment. She was distracted by the little girl, she had a hard time following the line of bullshit Brayden was handing her, but she never once took her eyes away from that sweet face and those big little-girl eyes.

And there was one moment when the mask slipped.

Some well-turned phrase, maybe. She’d seen it—raw triumph.

As if Brayden, behind her sweet little-girl exterior, behind the shocked and grieving sister, was playing her.

CHAPTER 34

Lying prone—in the same position he’d taken on the hill above George Hanley’s final resting place on the day of his funeral—the watcher conducted his surveillance from a knoll above Wolfe Manor Performance Horses. His Bushnell 10X42 Fusion 1600 ARC laser rangefinder binoculars were as good as they come.

It was still early in the day—not six a.m. yet. But horse people got up early.

His binocs followed Jaimie Wolfe as she fed the horses. Her movements were agitated and disjointed. She was shaken. She was worried and harried and scared and angry. He could hear it in the banging buckets and the yelled “Quit!” and the way she dumped flakes of hay so that some of it got tangled in her hair and in her face and she had to sneeze.

He thought she was crying. It was hard to tell from here. She sped through the feeding and went to the house and came out a few minutes later with a stack of papers, probably from her printer. She pulled the truck door open with force and hopped in and whammed the door shut. There was a moment where the truck didn’t move. He could see her, bent over the steering wheel, bent forward over the dash, her loose hair falling forward. He didn’t see her shoulders shaking, but he thought she might be crying.

Right now, she was thinking her dog was lost. And she wanted it back. She was desperate to get it back, and at this point, as much as she was in despair, she still had hope.

Hope could be dashed. But first things first. Let her experience hope and then get let down by it. It would be the first in a series of disappointments for her.

This was only Round One.

CHAPTER 35

The next morning, Tess tracked down the detective working the Chad DeKoven case in Laguna Beach. It was a short phone conversation, mainly because Detective Pete Morales had so little to go by.

“I didn’t tell the family, but it looked like a professional killing.” He described the chokehold that had been used. “Quick and efficient. Nothing was stolen. The kid had an expensive board—a limited edition called a ‘Sacrilege,’ It wasn’t taken. I find that significant.”

“Any thoughts on a possible motive?”

“It’s a puzzle. Offhand, it seems there was no reason. He didn’t have any enemies, was an easygoing kid, kind of did his own thing. More than one friend used the term “harmless.” My thinking is that whoever killed him was either in law enforcement, maybe military or former military, or someone who studied martial arts. They knew what they were doing.”

“Male?”

“Probably.”

“Nothing stolen from his house?”

“His place is a mess. I don’t know where they’d begin. The cottage was unlocked and undisturbed, as far as we could tell. We had a crime scene tech go through it—nothing remarkable except for his quiver.”

“Quiver?”

“His collection of boards. Massive—and all of them expensive, some of them one of a kind.”

“None missing?”

“Can’t be sure of that, but it doesn’t appear to be. That room was locked. It was an add-on, especially to keep his boards. The lock was intact.”

“How did the family react?” Thinking of Brayden last night.

A pause. “They were an oddball lot. Prickly with each other over little things. The youngest, Brayden uh…” He checked his notes. “McConnell, cried nonstop. People get strange, as you know, when they are grieving, or shocked by something like this. So it’s hard to judge.”

Tess asked him to keep her updated, and he agreed to send her a copy of the report.

Her phone rang again almost immediately. It was Detective Cheryl Tedesco.

Another drive to Tucson. This time to meet an assistant prosecutor who had called Tedesco about her meeting with Steve Barkman.

Tess met Cheryl at Barista, a coffee place downtown that catered to the people going in and out of the courthouse.

Cheryl ran it down for her, that an assistant prosecutor named Melinda Bayless had witnessed an altercation between her friend Brayden McConnell and Steve Barkman.

Melinda Bayless looked like a young lawyer on her way up. She wore a black pantsuit and black shoes with medium heels. Her hair was blonde and blunt cut down to her shoulders. She carried a briefcase. She might be twenty-seven, she might be thirty, she might be thirty-two. The deep salmon lipstick matched her blouse. She saw them and knew immediately who they were. They all introduced one another, three professional women, and lined up to get coffee at the counter. They sat in tall chairs at a table in the corner, the quietest spot in a roomful of babble.

As usual, Tess played the role of an observer.

For a lawyer, Melinda Bayless was pretty straightforward. She used her hands a lot, long tapered fingers, beautifully manicured nails painted the same color as her blouse.

Melinda said, “He came on to Brayden. At first Daffy—that’s our friend, Daphne Morales, she’s also an attorney—at first she and I were envious.” Brushed a strand of hair back. “Well, not envious, exactly. But he was good-looking. When I was younger, that was the main criteria, but we’re all older now and good looks are great but they’re certainly not enough.”