As soon as she stepped through the doorway, a young officer with smooth skin and a long, wet braid that left a dark mark on her uniform twisted around and introduced herself. Alyssa recognized her as the same one who had escorted Grace out earlier.

‘Sandra Falwin,’ she said, extending her hand first to Alyssa then to Cord before turning back with a sigh as she waved her arm toward the chaotic mess that was Gabriel’s office. ‘What a wreck, right?’

A black leather sofa had been dragged away from a wall and placed in nearly a forty-five-degree angle. The drawers on the expensive teak filing cabinet were pulled out with several of its files strewn about on the floor. Similarly, the doors from the desk were all flipped upside down, their contents scattered across the carpet. A storage closet containing reams of paper and other office supplies was ajar but otherwise undisturbed.

Alyssa rotated in a slow circle, her eyes appraising the destruction. Near a clean spot on the desk where it appeared a computer usually resided was a pair of gold and diamond cufflinks, and behind that, on one of the built-in bookshelves, was a woman’s diamond-encrusted Rolex. Both items would rack up more than a few pretty pennies if fenced. She directed Cord’s attention to the jewelry. ‘It’s beginning to look less like a robbery gone bad.’

Next, she focused on a coffee table with a dark spot marring its corner. On the carpet next to it was what appeared to be blood, smudged into a long line as if the bleeder had been dragged away. Spotting a lone sandal near the office doorway, Alyssa moved further into the room, locating its partner peeking out from beneath the desk. If she closed her eyes, she could envision Addis screaming for her best friend to run, to save herself, all while struggling to get away from the man who’d just brutally murdered her family. She shook her head to clear it. Imagining the terror both Addis and Emerson must’ve felt wasn’t going to get her any closer to locating them.

Giving the office one final glance, she and Cord left the technicians measuring, recording, and collecting evidence and moved down the hall to the master bedroom.

Clothes were strewn from one end of the room to the other, with a silky blouse decorating a large potted fern in the corner, the weight of it forcing the leaves down. Items from the bureau were scattered throughout the room. She turned to Cord. ‘This kind of reminds me of Holly’s first date.’ Her daughter had nearly emptied her closet by grabbing clothes at random and tossing them behind her without a backwards glance, muttering the entire time that she had nothing to wear.