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Then, he turned back and saw the feet sticking out from behind the couch.
“Wait,” he told her as she followed him into the house.
It was too late. She stepped up next to him and drew in a loud breath. She pointed at the shoes.
He nodded. “Stay here.”
His throat was dry and tight as he raised the gun to chest height and prowled across the room.Please let him have passed out drunk. Fainted. Suffered a bout of narcolepsy. Heck, even a heart attack would be okay.But he knew.
He knew before he peered around the corner and saw Grover Anderson lying on the floor, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, with a single bullet hole in the dead center of his forehead and a trail of blood running down the left side of his face. He knew, but he knelt beside Grover and checked his neck and the still-warm skin of his wrist for a pulse that wasn’t there.
Grover’s body was still warm. His eyes were clear, not milky. Ryan was far from an expert, but he knew enough from prosecuting killers to understand that a warm body temperature and clear eyes meant that Grover had most likely died within the last thirty minutes.
Half an hour ago, he and Leilah had been approaching the tiny village of Barrington proper. Had the killer or killers driven past them as they fled the scene? Or had they continued east? Or, Ryan thought, tightening his grip on the gun, were they still on the property, watching from the dark backyard?
He felt rather than saw Leilah come around the corner. He heard the sharp intake of her breath then a low, barely audible whimper.
“Go out to the car and start it, then call Jake. I’ll be out in a minute,” he said in a strained voice.
“Not a chance. We’re not splitting up, not least of all because you’re armed and I’m not.”
He twisted to look at her. “That’s fair.”
She crouched beside him and stared at Grover. “He’s dead, right?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” he said thickly.
“We need to call the police.”
“Eventually, yes. But there’s no helping him now. Come on.”
He rose and offered her his free hand to help her to her feet. She cast a final sorrowful look at Grover as Ryan led her out of the room and into the dining room. Judging by the upturned desk drawers and scattered papers, the room had doubled as Grover’s home office.
“They were looking for the Cortez files,” Leilah breathed.
“Probably. They didn’t find them, though.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Grover didn’t have copies.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes,” Ryan began. Then he stopped. “No. Actually, what he told me was that he didn’t have copies in his house.”
“Okay.”
“In his house,” he repeated.
They turned in unison and looked out the window at the barn.
13
Leilah insistedthey drive the short distance to the barn rather than walk across Grover’s shadowy yard, exposed and vulnerable. Ryan readily agreed and tried to convince her to wait in the Subaru with the engine running while he scoured the barn for any files the man may have squirreled away. But she was adamant. She didn’t want to let him out of her sight.
