Holliday was a man who wore expensive French aftershave, who read action thrillers by American authors, and who drank bourbon from Kentucky. He slipped his sneakers off without untying the laces first and needed glasses for reading the paperbacks by the bed. He drove a Ford, which would be the dark-green pickup truck parked in the lot outside. He took multivitamins and snacked on Snyder’s mini pretzels.

And Jack Holliday had case files Jessica fully intended getting her hands on.

She swept the flashlight in a wide arc around the cramped space and spotted the messenger bag under the desk. The buckles were undone, and she threw back the flap and pulled out the folder. There was nothing else inside the bag. Pushing the rest of the paperwork on the desk to one side, she opened the folder and quickly rifled through the contents. What Holliday had in his possession clearly wasn’t the original case file. Instead, the folder contained color copies of the contents of the murder book and missing person report.

Jessica froze midway through turning a page, convinced she had heard a noise right outside the door. It sounded like an empty soda can skittering across asphalt. She held her breath. Her pulse spiked. She counted five seconds, ten seconds, thirty seconds. She heard nothing else and breathed out slowly.

She held the flashlight between her teeth, pulled out her cell phone, and started photographing each page in the file, the same as she’d done with the newspaper articles at the Reformer offices.

The overhead light snapped on.

Jessica dropped the flashlight from her mouth and the cell phone from her hand, both hitting the hardwood flooring with a loud thud. The copies of the Lavelle case file fluttered to the floor.

“Jesus H. Christ!” she yelled.

She fumbled frantically in her bag for her gun and spun around to see Holliday standing in the doorway with a neutral expression on his face. She clutched her left hand to her chest, feeling like her heart might burst right through the rib cage.

“You seem to be in the wrong room, Miss Shaw.” Holliday pointed in the direction of her own room. “I believe you are residing in room five. This is not room five.”

“Jeez, Holliday. You almost gave me a heart attack. And believe me, that’s not something I’d say lightly.” Jessica dropped the gun back into the bag. “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

Holliday let out an incredulous laugh and shook his head. “You really are something else—do you know that?”

“Yeah, so I’ve been told.”

“You break into my room, and somehow I’m the bad guy? You know, I should call the cops right now.”