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ubtitle>RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES
PROLOGUE
Joey Nestler knew that he’d make a good cop one day. His father had been a cop and so had his grandfather. Joey’s grandfather had actually taken a bullet in the chest in 1968, sending him to early retirement. Being a cop was in Joey’s blood and even though he was only twenty-eight years old and was being given crap assignments, he knew that one day he would rise to the top.
Today was not that day, though. They’d assigned him another stupid bait-and-chase task – grunt work. Joey knew he had at least another six months of these bullshit assignments. That was fine with him. Coasting through Miami in a cop car during late spring was a pretty sweet deal. The ladies were eager to try on their skimpy shorts and bathing suits as the weather got nicer, and such things were easier to pay attention to and enjoy when he was tasked with menial duties.
He’d get right back to scanning the streets for such beauties when he was done with his most recent chore. He parked in front of the ritzy townhouses, each new set of homes bordered by a pretentiously well-maintained set of palm trees. He got out of the patrol car in no great hurry, pretty sure he was about to walk into a simple domestic dispute case. Even so, he had to admit that the details of the assignment piqued his curiosity.
A woman had called the precinct earlier that morning, claiming that her sister was not answering phone calls or emails. Usually that would not draw much interest at all, but when they ran the address of the sister, it was directly beside a townhouse that had called with a noise complaint the night before. Apparently a dog had been barking furiously all night. Phone calls and knocks on the door to get the owners to shut up went unanswered. And when the police called the woman back to inquire about her sister, it was confirmed that her sister did indeed have a dog.
And now here I am, Joey thought as he walked up the stairs to the front door.
He’d already stopped by the landlord’s office to retrieve a key, and that in and of itself made the task a little more interesting than his typical busy-body assignments. Still, he felt underused and a little silly as he knocked on the door. Given everything he knew about the case, he didn’t even expect an answer.
He knocked again and again, his hair sweating beneath his cap in the sun.
After two minutes, still no answer. He was not surprised.
Joey took out the key and unlocked the door. He cracked it open a bit and shouted inside.
“Hello? This is Officer Nestler with the Miami PD. I’m entering the house and – ”
The barking of a small dog interrupted him as it came rushing toward him. It was a Jack Russell terrier and while it tried its best to intimidate the strange man at the door, it also looked a little scared. Its back legs were trembling.
“Hey, buddy,” Joey said as he stepped inside. “Where’s your mommy and daddy?”
The little dog whined. Joey stepped further into the house. He had made two steps into the small foyer, heading for the living room, when he smelled the awful stench. He looked down to the dog and frowned.
“No one has let you out in a while, have they?”
The dog hung its head, as if it had perfectly understood the question and was ashamed of what it had done.
Joey walked into the living room, still calling out.
“Hello? I’m looking for Mr. or Mrs. Kurtz. Again, this is Officer Nestler of the Miami PD.”
But he got no answer, and he was sure he wouldn’t get one. He made his way through the living room, finding it spotless. He then entered the adjoining kitchen and placed his hand to his face to cover his mouth and nose. The kitchen was where the dog had decided to use the bathroom; puddles of urine were all over the floor and two piles of feces were in front of the fridge.
Empty food and water dishes were on the other side of the kitchen. Feeling bad for the dog, Nestler filled the water bowl with water from the kitchen sink. The dog started to lap at it greedily as Nestler left the kitchen. He then went to the flight of stairs just off of the living room and headed up.
As he came to the hallway at the top, Joey Nestler felt what his father had called a cop’s gut instinct for the first time in his career. He knew right away that something was wrong up here. He knew that he was going to find something bad, something that he had not been expecting.
He drew his gun, feeling a little foolish as he made his way down the hallway. He passed a bathroom (where he found another puddle of the dog’s urine) and a small office space. The office was a bit of a mess but there were no signs of distress or red flags.
At the end of the hall, a third and final door stood open, revealing the master bedroom.
Nestler stopped in the doorway, his blood running cold.
He stared for a full five seconds before stepping inside.
A man and a woman – presumably Mr. and Mrs. Kurtz – lay dead on the bed. He knew they were not sleeping due to the amount of blood on the sheets, walls, and carpet.
Joey took two steps inside but stopped. This was not for him. He needed to call this in before he went any further. Besides, he could see all he needed to from where he stood. Mr. Kurtz had been stabbed in the chest. Mrs. Kurtz had had her throat slit from ear to ear.
Joey had never seen so much blood in his life. It was almost dizzying to look at.
He backed out of the bedroom, not thinking of his father or grandfather, not thinking of the great cop he one day wanted to be.
He stormed outside, got to the bottom of the stairs, and fought against a heavy wave of nausea. As he fumbled for the shoulder mic on his uniform, he saw the Jack Russell come rushing out of the townhouse but didn’t care.
He and the little dog stood in front of the house as Nestler called the scene in, the dog yapping at the sky as if somehow that could change the horrors that lay inside.
CHAPTER ONE
Mackenzie White sat at her cubicle and habitually ran her index finger along the edges of a business card. It was a business card that she had been fixated on for several months now, a card that was somehow linked to her past. Or, more specifically, to the murder of her father.
She came back to it whenever she closed a case, wondering when she would allow herself to take some time off from her actual job as an agent so she could return to Nebraska and view the scene of her father’s death with reinvigorated eyes that were not regulated by an FBI mentality.
Work was burning her out lately and with each case she cracked, the lure of the mystery surrounding her father grew stronger. It was getting so strong that she was feeling less of a sense of accomplishment when she closed a case. The most recent had been bringing in two men that had been masterminding a plot to get cocaine into a Baltimore high school. The job had lasted three days and had gone so smoothly that it hadn’t seemed like work at all.
She’d had more than her fair share of notable cases since coming to Quantico and being pushed through the ranks in a whirlwind of action, back-room dealings, and close calls. She’d lost a partner, managed to piss off just about every supervisor she’d ever had, and made a name for herself.
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