He turned on the flashlight. The first image the light revealed was remarkable chaos. Someone had scrambled the contents of the room. Furniture was overturned, the contents of shelves swept onto the floor. Over it all was strewn a layer of paper. Someone had opened every piece of his mail that Karen had so carefully stored here for him.

His heart suddenly grew so heavy that he felt as if it would rip itself from his chest. They must have found the painting. It should have been part of the large packet of materials the Eden au Lac Hotel had forwarded to him, the contents of their hotel safe deposit box that he had forgotten to empty on checking out. His leverage was gone, and with it, his hope for getting Zoe back.

He idly swept the room with the flashlight’s beam as he stood there in stunned silence. A moment late the light revealed a scene so horrible that even the worst moments of his police career had left him unprepared.

Tony slumped in the far corner of the room, a single red bullet hole puckering the middle of his forehead like a third eye. On his shoulder a large brown rat was burying its snout in Tony’s neck. The rat turned toward Seth and stared arrogantly back, blinking eyes that shone red in the flashlight’s glare.

Seth stood there, completely paralyzed. As he watched in horror, another rat emerged from the cuff of Tony’s trousers, his snout glistening with blood. Seth leaned down to pick up something to throw at the rats when something warm and furry launched itself across the side of his face.

He lost his breath in an involuntary gasp, swatting the dark furry thing in a blind panic. A second later he heard it thump against the far wall. With shaking hands, he trained his flashlight on the area, catching a glimpse of the rat as it lay stunned. It revived quickly and scurried away.

Seth fought the hysteria that rose in his chest and clutched at his neck like an unseen hand. Frantically he swept the flashlight’s beam about the room until he found what he wanted. Trying to ignore the wet biting sounds made by the rats in the darkness, he made his way to the near corner of the storeroom and grabbed a wooden-handled broom.

In a frenzy of anger and frustration bordering on tears, he swung the broom at the rats, clubbing them away from Tony’s body. The claustrophobic windowless room grew thick with panicked pattering and scratching and a steady high-pitched chorus of indistinguishable screeches. Seth continued to sweep at the area around the corpse long after the last of the rodents had fled into the hallway.

He dropped the broom and knelt down beside Bradford, reaching out his right hand and gingerly touching Tony’s shoulder with the backs of his fingers. The body was still substantially above room temperature. He hadn’t been dead long. Seth stood up and played the light around Tony’s body. He hadn’t been beaten by his assailants. The only damage other than the large-caliber wound in his forehead had been done by the rats.