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But even as he thought it, a reluctant smile tugged at his lips. Jude had really impressed him. He’d come through in a big way, ready to have his back and he’d faked his way through that night with a calm head.
Pulling into the first floor garage, Snow sighed with relief as he punched in the code to open the door. Rowe had installed a top of the line security system the afternoon he’d signed the papers on this place. Thinking about Rowe made his chest hurt. Thinking about Melissa made him want to curl up somewhere and rail at the world for being fucking unfair. He trudged up the stairs and knew something was wrong before he even hit the lights.
One of his favorite things about his condo was the high number of windows in each room. He’d first viewed the place in the early morning and it had been a sunny day then, cheerful light pouring into every room. When he wasn’t working night shifts, he was an early riser and one thing he did like about night shifts was getting home around the time the sun rose so he could enjoy coffee in the window seat of his kitchen. He liked it because he could sit there, looking outside at the river while he enjoyed the scent of fresh ground coffee beans.
Coffee beans that now littered his wood floors.
Their container was also on the floor, along with the shattered coffee pot and two dining chairs were on their sides. Snow stood perfectly still as he took in the rest of the mess. His couch was on its back, a lamp had been broken—the shade completely bent out of shape. His one vase had been thrown across the room, knocking a hole in the wall—the shattered blue glass all over the floor. He closed his eyes, remembering when Melissa had given it to him because she said his place needed color.
He pulled out his cell phone but before he could dial, a spot of red caught his eye. As a surgeon, it was a shade of red he knew all too well. It was in the shape of a shoe, at the base of the staircase leading up to the other floors. There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms and the laundry room on the second floor. The master suite was on the third. He thought about going back to his car to get the gun he’d stashed in the glove compartment but instead strode around the kitchen island, and grabbed a knife out of the drawer.
More blood splatter covered the stairs. Partial footprints. He knew he should go back outside and call the police, knew he could be messing with a crime scene, but it hit him that Lucas, Rowe and Ian all had keys to his place. They were the only people with access to his home. Heart pounding in his throat, Snow crept around the bloody places on his stairs, following the trail. There was a bare foot at the top. A bare, male foot. The rest of the body was out of sight around the wall that kept the stairs enclosed.
All the breath left his body.
He couldn’t take the next step over that foot to see who was lying on the second floor landing. A sob of terror lodged in his throat and he braced one hand on his wall so he didn’t fall. It was only the thought of whomever that was still having life and needing help that finally forced him to step over the foot. Confusion washed away the fear over it being one of his friends. It wasn’t.
It was the man he’d hit at The Dock the night before. The giant who had towered over him and hurt Geoffrey.
Naked.
Bloody.
With a fixed stare.
Shock kept Snow’s feet glued to the floor. He couldn’t compute any of this. Couldn’t understand the smears of blood on the walls. The way the fluid had soaked into the beige carpet. Why the man was here—why a familiar baseball bat rested on the floor by his body.
Why his cheek had been split open in the same place Snow had split another’s cheek years ago.
Bile rose so hard and fast in his throat, he bent and clutched his stomach. But the light was on in the room behind the body and he couldn’t stop himself from going farther.
Snow was careful to avoid blood as he walked into the guest room he only used when he brought men home. The green comforter and sheets laid in a tangled mass at the bottom of the bed, clothes littered the floor, and the nightstand held empty beer bottles and a condom wrapper. The blood splatter on the wall behind the bed and across the pillows told a horrific story of what had happened here.
