Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead(Finlay Donovan #2)(29)

The hardwood planks creaked under Vero’s feet as she crept down the hall. A lamp snapped on in Steven’s office, and I heard the fast glide of file drawers and the frantic rustling of folders as Vero searched. I pulled aside Bree’s desk chair, hurriedly opening and closing drawers, rummaging through them for anything personal she might have left behind … anything that might help me find her. If Steven had made any enemies through his work, his assistant was likely to know.

A message book sat open beside the phone, the kind with a spiral binding and perforated tear-away sheets that left duplicate copies on thin yellow film. I flipped through a few dozen messages, but none of them jumped out as odd. As I set the message book back in its place, I noticed a plastic file box marked TIME CARDS beside the phone.

I thumbed through the index cards where Steven’s hourly employees clocked in and out of their shifts, pausing on the only woman’s name in the box: Breanna Fuller. This had to be Bree.

I snapped a photo of the card with my phone, capturing her contact information and the times and dates of her most recent shifts. Her last day of work was a Saturday … October 26?

That couldn’t be right.

That was the day Nick and I had come, pretending to shop for sod, when Bree had given us directions to the fescue field. The day before the police dug up the bodies. But Steven said he’d let her go after the news broke.

I turned over the card, but the back was empty. Her last day of work had been about a month ago. Steven had always been an excellent liar, but why bother lying about this?

The clock on the wall ticked. I stuffed the card back in the box and moved to a set of file drawers. A pile of personal items had been tucked inside, and I rifled through them. A pair of faux leather gloves, a collapsible umbrella, a tube of lip gloss, a bottle of sparkly blue nail polish … I paused, withdrawing a well-worn copy of a familiar romantic suspense novel—one of my novels. The edges of the book were stamped, property of the local public library. I flipped clumsily to the back cover and fished the library card from its sleeve. The book was weeks overdue. If these were Bree’s things, why hadn’t she come back for them? And of all the romantic suspense novels she could have checked out of the library, why had she chosen one of mine?

A photo slipped free of the book’s pages. Bree’s fresh face smiled back at me. Steven’s arm was slung over her shoulder, the photo folded on either side of them so only the two of them were shown in the frame. I unfolded the sides, revealing the rest of the image. Another older man I didn’t recognize stood to Bree’s right, his arm around her waist. He was tall, a good ten or fifteen years older than Steven, with a strong jaw and handsome features, his light hair receding just enough from his temples to reveal tanned smile lines around amiable blue eyes. He looked familiar, maybe because he oozed the same unshakable confidence as my ex-husband. While he and Steven didn’t necessarily look alike, there was an alikeness to them, and Bree looked radiantly happy bookended by their arms.

To Steven’s other side, a thin middle-aged man with shaggy graying hair stood slightly apart, as if he’d been caught up in the pull of the other three and unwittingly captured in the moment. His close-lipped smile was tight, his face angled away, as if to downplay the large, dark mole high on his right cheek. While the blond man looked familiar for reasons I couldn’t entirely place, I had no idea who this man might be. Whoever these men were, they were clearly important to both Bree and Steven.

I tucked the photo in my pocket as a shrill ring rattled the room.

I swung toward the phone on Bree’s desk. The caller ID lit up: Incoming call from Homesafe Security.

“Finn? Are you seeing this?” Vero’s voice was tense, suggesting she was seeing the same thing I was on the phone on Steven’s desk.

“It’s the monitoring company. We have to answer it.”

“Then they’ll know we’re here!”

“If we don’t pick up, they send the cops!” The phone rang again. My heart pounded as I reached for it. I held it to my ear and covered the receiver, speaking through my fingers. “Hello?”

“This is Homesafe Security. We’re responding to an alarm. With whom am I speaking?”

My panicked eyes scanned the desk, landing on the box of time cards as the woman waited for my answer. All the names in the box had belonged to men, except for one. I cleared my throat, adjusting the pitch of my voice to match Bree’s bubbly lilt. “This is Bree. Bree Fuller. I’m the administrative assistant. Sorry to disturb you. I totally forgot my … umbrella.”

Your umbrella? Seriously? Vero mouthed beside me.

“When I came back to get it, I forgot the alarm was set. But it’s all fine here. Really. Nothing’s wrong,” I said through a nervous laugh.

“That’s fine, Bree. I’ll just need your verbal code word, authorizing us to void the alarm.”

“My verbal code word?” I turned to Vero. Her eyes went wide.

“Ma’am, do you need me to send an officer to your location? Are you in distress?”

“Yes, I mean no!” I slapped a hand over my face. “No, I am not in distress. You absolutely do not need to send an officer here.” Vero rushed to the window, peering through the blinds.

“Then I do need you to confirm the six-letter safe word to dismiss the alarm.”

My tongue froze against the roof of my mouth. What safe word would Steven use? The silence dragged on as I counted off letters. Delia was too short. Theresa was too long.