Harrison P. Monroe, forty-five, owned a nice ten-acre spread in New Braunfels, north of San Antonio, jointly with his wife, Faith Parker Monroe, forty-four. No children. Stockbroker for a major brokerage firm. Not specifically land investments, but they were cousins, so to speak, so Sean kept him on the list as well. His only debt was his house, which he had taken a second mortgage out for renovations, and one car loan, though he had three cars in either his or his wife’s name. Faith was a senior lawyer for a major San Antonio firm, but her specialty wasn’t listed on their website.

Harrison T. Monroe, thirty-five, lived in Austin. He was a red flag—he had substantial debt and was upside down on his mortgage. Also married—to Natalie, thirty-six—with two kids, both preteens. He was a Realtor, specialized in residential properties. His wife didn’t work after she had her first kid, up until two years ago when she renewed her dental hygienist license and started working for a dentist office that specialized in children.

Red flag because of his career—he might have known Victoria Mills as a fellow Realtor, and he had the knowledge to run a land scam. Red flag because of his debt—if he was banking on a get-rich-quick-scheme that didn’t pan out the way he wanted, he might be desperate enough to kill. Harrison T. was at the top of Sean’s list, but he’d check out the other two Harrisons.

Sean knew a bit about land scams from reading the news, and he understood how some of them worked, but straw buyers were usually small scale—buying a property that had been listed too low by an unscrupulous Realtor, then either fixing it up and selling high for a quick profit or renting it out for a steady income. Very hard to prosecute such cases because the buyers willingly signed a contract and agreed to sell the house for a specific price. Unfortunately, many of those scammed were the elderly, and that really irritated Sean.

He didn’t see Victoria Mills—what little he knew of her—as scamming senior citizens. She was wealthy in her own right. And the way Stan had described it, the contracts he’d seen appeared to be for tracts of land, not individual houses.