Alyssa nodded and retrieved her phone from her pocket. She hadn’t doubted it, but it was always nice hearing that her partner had her back, no matter the situation. She placed the call, and as she suspected, Hammond more than trusted her judgement and promised to issue the Amber Alerts as soon as he hung up.

With that out of the way, she and Cord moved over to examine the area surrounding Gabriel Kensington’s body. Resting just beneath his right ribcage was a knife; its handle, like the rolling pin, was smeared with blood. Alyssa lifted her gaze and spotted the wooden butcher block with its one empty slot sitting on the blood and tissue-sprinkled counter.

Studying the pattern of blood spatter flung high onto the ceilings, walls, and counters made it abundantly clear they were dealing with a crime of passion, whether that was love, hate, anger, or an amalgamation of all of them. In the end, they all equaled the same outcome – a murderous rage.

In order to understand the motive, Alyssa knew it was often imperative to first try to understand who the victims were. But despite the story the gruesome scene conveyed, she found it difficult to believe Gabriel was the type of person who might warrant such fury, though granted, her only dealings with him had been on a purely professional level. As a private investigator, he’d contacted her a few times in order to inquire about a case or ask what she could share with him regarding certain individuals, and he’d always been cordial and polite.

His public persona was more of the same – friendly and outgoing, something that wasn’t always easy since the citizens of Albuquerque tended to either love or hate the Kensingtons. Gabriel’s great-grandfather was rumored to have been an outlaw – and not the Hollywood heroic type – who’d used ill-gotten means to amass the Kensington fortune. His grandfather, tired of the tarnished name, invested his money wisely and became wealthy in his own right. Choosing to use his riches to help the less fortunate, he launched numerous charities, several of which were shut down when Gabriel’s uncle decided to both skim money from the top, as well as ignore that pesky requirement of paying taxes. Of course, the coup d’état was when he’d avoided jail time only to turn around and scam hundreds of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting citizens, dying before being forced to pay retribution.

Years later, after his own parents had died, Gabriel had stepped in to run the few remaining charities. Though he’d only been a teenager when his uncle had made front page news every day for months, Alyssa knew there were still people out there who held a grudge against the Kensington name. It was plausible Gabriel and Lydia’s murders were a result of misplaced revenge.