He stared her squarely in the eye, his earlier weariness nowhere to be seen. He was all challenge now. “Then bring it on.”

For a moment she couldn’t draw a breath. Then his mouth quirked up and she laughed. How was it that this man could make her laugh when she should be telling him “no” in no uncertain terms?

She opened her mouth to say exactly that, but instead heard herself say, “All right.”

Chapter Nine

Cincinnati, Ohio
Saturday, March 16, 10:15 p.m.

Grant Masterson stood in the enormous walk-in closet of his brother’s Cincinnati apartment, mouth agape once again. He’d never seen so many suits outside of a clothing store. And they were expensive suits. He recognized a few of the designers, and those were ones he’d overheard on the television when Cora was watching some fancy awards show.

And shoes. My God. How many shoes could one man wear? He blinked, doing another dazed three-sixty. And then his gaze fell on a mirror.

That was slightly ajar. Because it was a door.

He’d pulled on the latex gloves he’d found in Wes’s Cleveland safe before he’d touched anything in this building—even the elevator button. He’d been in luck, because the doorman’s post was empty, a sign saying he’d be back in five minutes, so there had been no one to ask him questions about Wes that he couldn’t answer.

Wes’s Cincinnati apartment was astonishing. A wall of windows allowed a view of the river that Grant expected was a main factor in the price.

But the contents of this closet alone had to be worth more than fifty grand. Grant thought of the brick of heroin that he’d carefully replaced in the safe, and wondered how many other bricks there had been.

A quick Google search had revealed that the street price for the single brick was close to six hundred grand. When he’d added up all the receipts he’d found and added the five hundred grand still in the safe . . . Wes had to have started out with at least three of the bricks. That was nearly two million dollars’ worth of heroin.

It had left him dizzy and nauseated.

His cop brother had sold heroin. Those drugs were on the streets of Cleveland, being shot into the arms of addicts of all ages. And why?

For this apartment. These suits. Those shoes. And whatever was hidden behind the mirror.

He opened the mirror enough to peer in and frowned. There were more clothes hanging on a rack. He activated the flashlight on his cell phone and walked into the hidden room, about the size of a normal person’s closet.