"Elena?" he called out. "That you?"
No answer. The footsteps continued, steady and unhurried, approaching his office.
Richard felt a flicker of unease, quickly suppressed. This was Paradise Valley. His neighborhood had private security, cameras, and gates. His house had a state-of-the-art alarm system that he'd armed before Elena left. Or had he? He'd been distracted by the financial reports, eager to dive into the numbers…
"Hello?" he called again, his voice sharper now.
The footsteps stopped just outside his office door.
Richard's hand moved instinctively toward his desk drawer, where he kept—what? A letter opener? As if that would do any good. His heart rate had picked up, that primitive warning system that evolution had gifted humans, the one that screamed danger when rational thought was still catching up.
The door opened slowly.
A figure stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light. Richard couldn't make out features, couldn't tell if this was someone he knew or a stranger.
"Who the hell are you?" Richard demanded, trying to inject authority into his voice, trying to sound like a man in control of his own home. "How did you get in here?"
The figure didn't respond. Didn't move. Just stood there, watching him.
Richard's mind raced through possibilities. A burglar? But burglars didn't stand in doorways announcing their presence. They grabbed their valuables and fled. A home invasion? But those were usually violent and immediate, not this strange theatrical stillness. Someone with a grudge? His business had made him enemies—you didn't build what he'd built without stepping on toes, without making people angry.
But angry enough for whatever this was?
"I'm calling the police," Richard said, reaching for his phone on the desk.
The figure moved then, stepping into the office with that same unhurried pace. As they entered the light from Richard's desk lamp, he saw they were wearing a ski mask and gloves. Black gloves.
"Listen," Richard said, sensing this was far worse than he'd anticipated. "Whatever you want, we can talk about it. Money? I have money. Access to accounts. Just tell me what you want."
The figure reached into their jacket.
Richard's body tensed, every survival instinct screaming at him to move, to run, to do something. But his legs wouldn't respond.
The gloved hand emerged holding a gun with a suppressor attached to the barrel. That detail told Richard everything about his chances of survival. This was an execution.
"Wait," Richard said, his hands coming up. "Please. Whatever I did, we can fix it. I can make it right."
The figure raised the gun, the movement smooth and practiced.
"Please," Richard whispered.
The figure stepped closer. Close enough that Richard could see eyes behind the ski mask. Eyes he thought he might recognize, though his fear-scrambled mind couldn't place them.
The suppressed gunshot was quieter than Richard expected—muted, contained, a sound that wouldn't carry beyond these walls. His chest exploded with pressure. His hand knocked over the glass of Macallan, expensive scotch spilling across financial reports that promised a future he'd never see.
Richard Garrison fell, his vision already darkening at the edges.
His last thought was that he'd been wrong about so many things.
Then the darkness came, complete and final.
CHAPTER ONE
Kari Blackhorse drove through Flagstaff in the early morning light, finally feeling like herself again after the chaos of the previous week.
The Hopi reservation case had ended a week ago with David Lomatuway'ma's confession, but the immediate aftermath had been consuming—paperwork, debriefings with Captain Yazzie, coordinating with Hopi authorities on the prosecution, and the exhausting process of documenting everything for the case file. She'd planned to meet her father the day after the arrest, as promised, but complications with the case had forced them to postpone.
Now, a week later and properly rested, she was finally ready to hear what her father had discovered in her mother Anna's research files. His text from the previous week still nagged at her: Some of what I found... it's disturbing.
