Half Empty (First Wives #2)

Reed held a photograph he’d received from the crime scene pictures. How he obtained them, Trina didn’t ask. She was thankful that she didn’t need to see the ones that actually showed Fedor’s lifeless body.

Although she knew exactly when Reed was looking at those particular pictures. He flipped them quickly when she walked around him to peer at his phone.

She pushed a plush chair to the far corner of the room, beside a bookcase, a lamp, and a side table.

Wade and Reed scooted the desk around until it was perfectly centered to the room and just past the three-quarter mark of the second set of windows. The curtains had been replaced . . . after. There was a fireplace on the north side of the room, the hearth clean of ashes and soot. She remembered how Fedor liked to have a fire going on cool nights. He didn’t like the gas-fed options like they had inside the house. “Crackling wood and the smell of smoke is primal,” he’d told her, laughing.

“You okay?” Wade asked as he came up behind her.

She blinked her gaze away from the fireplace. “Yup.”

Reed picked up shards of broken glass and looked at the picture on his phone. “I’m assuming that this used to be this vase.” He turned the phone around and pointed to it.

Trina shrugged. “Looks right. I couldn’t really tell you.”

Reed looked from his phone to the desk, and then tweaked the objects on the desk until he got them just right.

It took a couple of hours, but they finally had the room looking somewhat normal, minus the dark smudges left behind from the investigators searching for prints.

“Okay.” Reed dropped his arm holding his phone. “We’re done.” He turned a full circle, looked at his phone, and repeated his action several times.

“It’s all here.” Trina didn’t see one thing missing.

Reed flipped through a few pictures, tilted his head, and stared at where Fedor’s body would have landed.

“Let’s talk about what you would see when you normally walked in.”

Trina pushed the last time out of her head and moved to the door.

“It was almost always late. Or around dinnertime, if he was home. Most nights he was at the hospital until late. At least toward the end.”

Wade watched her from the corner of the room, something Trina was acutely aware of.

She offered him a reassuring smile, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and walked toward the desk.

The memory of Fedor sitting behind his desk, his eyes fixed on the fire in the hearth, filled her thoughts. Many times he didn’t even realize she was standing there until after she called his name. Not that the office was so big that he could miss her walking in. It’s just that he was so focused on his problems, it was easy to sneak up on him.

“. . . so he would jump sometimes, when I stood next to the desk.” She stood there now, looking down and trying hard not to see him there dead.

Alive.

See him alive, she told herself.

She rolled her hands.

“When he wasn’t whittling some new trinket, he played with two silver balls. Like worry stones. It was a habit.”

Reed flipped through a few pictures. “Did he keep them in here?”

“This is where I noticed them. It wasn’t something he did when he was at the hospital, so I doubt he kept them with him.”

Reed pulled open drawers that they’d dropped the contents back inside in their haste to make the room look normal.

They didn’t find them.

“They aren’t here. The coroner report should tell what was found on his person when they brought him in. I’ll see if we can get a copy.”

“Seems like an odd thing to be missing,” Wade said.

“Were they valuable?” Reed asked.

“I have no idea. No more than anything else in here, I suspect.”

“Sentimental? Did they belong to a family member? His mother?”

Trina shook her head. “His grandfather gave them to him. That and this.” She picked up the inkwell and fountain pen that sat on the corner of his desk. “It belonged to his grandfather on Ruslan’s side.”

“‘To my pride and joy,’” she read aloud.

Wade moved beside her.

“So the grandfather called him his pride and joy. Not his own son,” Reed mused out loud.

“I didn’t question it. I just know that at some point Fedor pointed out the pen and showed me what was written on it.”

Reed smiled and set the pen in question back on the desk. “So Grandpa loved his grandson more than his own son, and the only things missing in here are the silver worry stones.”

“Shouldn’t we tell the police?” Wade asked.

“We will . . . eventually.”

“Eventually?”

Reed sighed. “There are always leaks in investigations. Just like me having the pictures of this office the night Fedor’s body was found, someone else might be listening in on other facts. Two missing silver stones mean nothing unless we find them with someone who shouldn’t have them. Then maybe we will have a direct link to our killer.”

“I would think stealing anything like that would be a stupid mistake for a killer willing to go through all this effort to hide.”

“Many perps collect trophies of their kills. In this case, there might be a personal connection. Considering Ruslan is the number one suspect, it wouldn’t be a stretch to pin him for a man who wanted to be his father’s pride and joy . . . and therefore, he grabbed the stones at some point. Could have been the night of Fedor’s death, or maybe last week. It’s hard to say.”

“Why not let the information leak and sit back and watch? If it’s Ruslan, he might try and get rid of the stones. Or bring them back here,” Trina said.

Reed paused. “That’s certainly an option, but not until this house is empty. Our murderer has been free for a year. Chances are they think they’re home clear, but now that the police are opening up the investigation again, things will heat up.”

“We need to get Avery out of here,” Trina muttered.

“We need to get you out of here.” Wade wrapped his arm around her waist.

She rested the side of her head on his chest. Leaning on him had become a habit, one she didn’t want to break.

Reed’s cell phone rang and he turned to take the call. “I’m afraid to ask why you’re calling.”

Reed looked at Trina and Wade as he spoke.

He didn’t blink. “Is that so. Why?”

There was a pause while he listened.

“Can you tap that feed into our system?” Reed smiled. “Of course you can.”

He nodded. “Where is Ruslan now?”

Trina heightened her attention to Reed’s conversation.

“No, I have New York covered. Do you need backup?” Reed grinned again. “Of course not. You know how to get ahold of me if you do.”

He hung up.

“Who was that?” Wade asked.

“Sasha.”

“Catwoman?”

Reed smiled. “Yeah, her. Seems Ruslan had a need to visit his son’s grave.”

Trina narrowed her eyes. “What? Why?”

“To place flowers, of all things . . . flowers hiding a camera.”

“He wants to see who is stopping by?”

“So it appears. Only we’re attempting to trace the feed back to him.”

Wade squeezed Trina’s arm. “My mother is on her way back to Texas.”

Reed held up a hand. “And Ruslan has already left.”

“Where to?”

“The flight plan was Mexico City. Sasha is following.”

Trina turned a full circle in the room. “Ruslan has to be behind this. Behind Fedor’s murder.”

“Why would a father kill his son?” Wade asked.

Trina lifted her head. “I don’t know. But I know someone who would.”

“Who?” Reed asked.

Trina scanned the room again. “Alice.”

“But she’s dead.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s done talking.” And it was high time Trina heard what she had to say.





Chapter Twenty-Seven