CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
Van Nuys, California
Mission Day Three
The front door of the house was ajar.
Jules Cassidy spotted it from the sidewalk. He knew Sam saw it, too—from the bigger man’s subtle energy shift. Sam went from relaxed alert to engagedalert. And when Jules glanced back at him to confirm, their brief eye contact would’ve been enough even without Sam’s slight nod.
A perk of working with one of your best friends—communication was instant.
But when Sam pulled a handgun from a holster he’d apparently been wearing under his arm, keeping it tucked in close to his body—no point in frightening the neighbors by waving it about—Jules felt the need to whisper, “What the hell, Starrett?”
This had been deemed, by Sam himself, an “easy case.”
Easy and danger-free.
Locate a woman who’d been left a fortune by elderly Milton F. Devonshire, recently deceased Hollywood producer, and earn a small mountain of money for Jules’s new employer, Troubleshooters Incorporated.
Piece o’ cake, Sam had said in the slow drawl that matched his long, tall Texan height, sun-bleached hair, and cowboy boots.
Of course it would’ve been an even easierpiece o’ cakehad the woman been named something unique like Calantha Bombardo instead of Emily Johnson. But other than the PITA factor of there being hundreds of Emily Johnsons in the Greater Los Angeles area, which had resulted in two very un-fun days—so far—of searching for the correct Emily, this was absolutely the type of follow-the-paper-trail case in which an investigator would automatically leave their Glock home, secure in a lockbox.
Sure, they’d stumbled across potential evidence of fraud as they’d dug into the dead producer’s illustrious life, but that seemingly had nothing to do with finding Emily Johnson.
But Sam was Sam. “Navy SEAL,” he explained his weapon in an unnecessary whisper back to Jules as they cautiously approached this latest Emily’s open door, becauseyeah, no shit, Obi Wan. The SEAL was—and had always been—strong in this one.
At a closer glance, it was clear that Emily’s door had been kicked in. It was hanging drunkenly from its top hinge—the others had broken from a brutal forced entry. That was enormously ungood.
Since Sam was the only one of them who’d been stupid—or smart—enough to carry concealed on a mind-numbing series of routine identity checks on an ordinary Friday morning in an allegedly easy case, Jules let the former SEAL nudge his way in front as they drew closer, moving silently toward that hanging-open door.
This well-worn little SoCal Valley neighborhood of mostly single-story homes was close to silent in the warm morning breeze. A leaf-blower buzzed in the distance and somewhere even farther away a dog barked. Jules could hear the traffic from Sepulveda swooshing past and somewhere overhead a single-prop airplane droned.
This latest Emily’s house was as silent as the grave, and just as welcoming, with the window shades tightly pulled down. Whatever room that front door opened into was unlit and filled with shadows. But they were shadows that didn’t shift or jump or move at all, so two thumbs up for that at least.
Sam met Jules’s eyes again as he positioned his gun into more of a ready stance, his silent message an obviousShall we?
It was then and there that the absurdity of the automatic pilot that they’d instantly slipped into took hold.
They were in the freaking suburbs. This was neither a war zone nor a known nest of criminal activity—not even close.
Were theyreallygoing to burst into some random and potentially innocent Emily Johnson’s little house, weapondrawn and ready for a fight? Jules wasn’t an FBI agent anymore—ouch, that realization still sharply stung. And even though anyone who had ever worn the uniform knew “once a SEAL always a SEAL,” Sam Starrett really wasn’t a SEAL anymore, either. They were investigators. On an easy case. Searching for a soon-to-be-very-wealthy woman.
“Wait,” Jules told Sam quietly. “This isn’t... We can’t...” On the drive over, he’d been certain this particular visit was perfunctory. But they needed to tick the box next to this address as they went down their long,longlist of Los Angeles-area Emily Johnsons. He took a breath. “We don’t even think this is our Emily.”
But Sam shook his head. “Oh,” he whispered back. “I think withthis, we do.”
It was clear that Sam saw the broken door as the equivalent of a big orange flashing neon sign sayingFound Her!
But maybe... “It could be a coincidence.”
Sam laughed a near-silent but mighty WTF burst—a combo of both amusement and disbelief. “You don’t believe in coincidences,” he shot back in a whisper.
“There’s a first time for everything.” Jules warmed to the idea. “Like, I don’t know, a disgruntled ex, pissed that this Emily changed the locks...? He came in anyway, to... get his gaming console and his favorite pair of cargo shorts.”
Even as he said the words, the idea that the broken hinges and splintered wood of the door was the coincidental result of an ex “coming in anyway” did seem highly unlikely. On the other hand, most exes were exes for damn good reasons.
