‘All done,’ Alyssa said, unable to hold back a grin as Hammond bellowed from his office that he was less than twenty feet away. Similarly, Sandra’s wide smile showcased two rows of perfectly straight teeth that had to have required years of dental work.

‘Thank you so much, Detective Wyatt.’

Hal chuckled when Cord said, ‘You might want to hold back on that thank you until your first day on the team’s in the history books. Lys here can be a real taskmaster.’

‘Bite me,’ Alyssa retorted.

‘Point…’ Cord wisely allowed his comeback to trail off when Alyssa’s glare threatened retribution if he completed it.

‘Well, you’ve met Cord. This is Hal Callum, everyone’s go-to guy, from advice to anything research-related. You’ll meet Joe and Tony as soon as I track them down.’

‘Tony White? I think I kind of indirectly met him last night at the Kensington residence,’ Sandra said.

As Alyssa was saying, ‘Then you’ll meet him officially,’ Joe and Tony rounded the corner together, and she couldn’t help but notice Tony looked much more like his old self as he described how he had tracked an elk through the woods in the early morning hours of his last day of hunting, having it charge, and then losing it altogether when he tripped over a tree root poking out of the ground.

‘Hurt like hell when my face scraped down the side of that damn tree,’ he said, pulling up short when he spotted Sandra. His normal white pallor flushed such a bright red he appeared to have a third-degree sunburn, as if he was embarrassed to admit to someone not on the team that he’d been so ungraceful.

‘Just the people I needed. Joe, Tony, this is Officer Sandra Falwin. She’ll be joining our team for this case. Cord and I just spoke with one of Gabriel Kensington’s neighbors, a Barbara Carpenter, who may have given us our first glimpse of a possible suspect, so I’m going to need you both to canvass the neighborhood once more, see if anyone who has a security system will let you take another look. Gabriel and an unknown male had some type of verbal altercation yesterday in the driveway around four or shortly after. If we’re lucky, someone will recognize Gabriel’s visitor. Or at the very least, maybe someone’s camera will have captured the guy’s car driving up, and we can at least release something to the public.’

‘We can head over there right now, unless you’ve got something else you need us to do,’ Joe said.

Alyssa held up the search warrant for Kensington Investigations. ‘Actually, I do. I’d like you to accompany Cord and me to serve this warrant. But before we head out, where are we on the phone records and financials?’

‘Still waiting,’ Tony said. ‘Sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear.’