Half Empty (First Wives Series Book 2)

by Catherine Bybee

  “Stop, I’m going to—”

  She didn’t stop. And apparently he didn’t have the will to pull her away. Her lips tingled with the taste of him. The siren in her stretched and purred with the power of her ability to make him lose control.

  Her knees ached when she tried to stand.

  Wade reached out a hand to help.

  “You didn’t stop.” He wore a drunken smile.

  “Oops.”

  The water started to turn cold. Trina glanced at the showerhead. “So much for conservation.”

  He shivered, grabbed the shampoo, and made quick work of finishing what she started.

  Once out, Wade tossed a towel over her shoulders before grabbing one for himself.

  With Superman speed, Wade dropped his damp towel and helped her with hers.

  “I can manage,” she said, her grin teasing.

  “I’m sure you can, but I can’t wait.”

  He dried her off. Even managed to wring out her long hair before wrapping her in a dry towel. With both hands on her backside, he pushed her out of the bathroom and straight to the bed. He turned her around and playfully nudged her onto her back.

  “Now, where were we?” he asked as he dropped to his knees. “Oh, yes . . .” He picked up the edge of the towel with his teeth, dropped it to one side. “There we were.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Good morning.”

  Trina blinked, hardly believing what she was seeing.

  “Wade?” she called behind her.

  “Just a second, darlin’.”

  “I see you weren’t expecting me.”

  Trina looked at the two new additions in the room and then to Lori, who was huddled over her coffee cup.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Trina finally addressed her father.

  Wade’s footsteps stopped when he walked into the kitchen. His voice penetrated the back of the room. “Mom. What are you doing here?”

  Vicki and Mauro sat at the kitchen counter, coffee cups close by. Neither of them looked like they knew how to smile.

  Trina’s father didn’t start with any pleasantries. His gaze tracked Wade as he walked into the room and kissed his mother’s cheek.

  “Really? In your husband’s house?” Mauro spoke in Spanish.

  The euphoria Trina shared with Wade the night before shattered with her father’s accusing words.

  Trina lifted her chin. “It’s rude to speak in Spanish, Papa.”

  “Do you want everyone to hear what I have to say?” He looked directly at Wade.

  Wade placed a hand on her arm, sensing the heat in her father’s words, even if he didn’t understand them.

  Instead of giving her father a private audience, she forced a smile. “Wade, I’d like you to meet my father, Mauro. Daddy, this is Wade.”

  She waited a beat and prayed her father hadn’t lost all his manners.

  Mauro puffed out his chest like he had for her first date when she was fifteen, and went toe-to-toe with Wade.

  Wade put his hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  Mauro lifted his hand slowly before grabbing hold.

  The room was silent while they shook hands.

  Trina glanced at Lori.

  Lori looked at their clasped hands.

  Vicki glared at Trina.

  Her father silently kept shaking for what felt like five minutes. “You’re a musician?” he eventually asked, even though he had yet to let Wade’s hand go.

  “I am.”

  Lori cleared her throat and Mauro finally released.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” Wade told his mother.

  Vicki lifted her chin. “Ike returned without you. I was concerned. Imagine my surprise when I arrived thirty minutes after Trina’s father. Both of us quite clueless about what is going on here.”

  “And my surprise when I learned the tabloids had the truth of the matter regarding your new friendship,” Mauro said.

  “The tabloids are full of lies, Papa. You know that.”

  “Are you two dating?” he asked.

  Trina glanced at Wade.

  “Yes, sir. We are.”

  Her father narrowed his eyes at Wade. “Then you should have respect for her late husband and take it away from this house.” Mauro’s words were harsh and meant to hurt.

  “There have been a few unfortunate events that have prevented that.”

  Mauro looked unconvinced. “What could be so limiting that a man of your standing and wealth cannot overcome?”

  “Is there a party in here?” On crutches, Avery hobbled into the kitchen.

  Lori scrambled to her side to help, and Wade pushed a chair out of her way so Avery had a clear path to her perch on the couch.

  “What are you doing up without someone helping?” Trina asked.

  “Shannon doesn’t need to watch me pee,” Avery insisted.

  “Oh my Lord.”

  Trina turned around to see Vicki’s and her father’s eyes tracking Avery.

  “We will be leaving the house once Avery is ready to fly,” she told her father. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. But it couldn’t be helped.”

  “What happened?” Vicki asked.

  Mauro had met Avery before, when she was visiting over the holidays. He seemed to lose much of his anger while watching her attempt to walk.

  “Someone beat the crap out of me in a parking lot in broad daylight in the center of Manhattan. At the same time someone else broke into the office out back. No one thinks it’s a coincidence. Oh, and the police are opening up Fedor’s case as a murder investigation.” Avery sighed once she was finally on the couch with her foot propped up on a few pillows. “Did I miss anything else?”

  “No, that about covers it,” Lori said.

  “Who is Fedor?” Vicki asked.

  “Trina’s late husband,” Wade told her.

  “Murder?” Mauro asked Trina directly.

  She answered with a single nod. “Whoever broke in didn’t take anything, they just wiped the room clean of any fingerprints.”

  “And blood,” Avery offered. “Don’t forget the blood, and the housekeeper’s mysterious accidental death. I forgot about that.”

  “Is this all true?” Mauro asked Trina in Spanish.

  “Sadly,” she told him.

  “No wonder Ike suggested I come,” Vicki said.

  “Ike had no business dragging you into this. In fact, it’s safer for you to be at home.”

  “Then you should come with me.”

  “Once Trina can safely leave, I’ll be back in Texas.” Wade moved beside Trina and placed a hand on the small of her back. “I’m truly sorry if that upsets either one of you, but that’s how this is going to play out.”

  Jeb, Reed, and Shannon walked into the room and paused at the door.

  Wade turned to Reed. “How soon will we have Rick’s replacement here?”

  “Couple hours.”

  Wade addressed Jeb. “When he arrives, I’d like you to accompany my mother home. Make sure she arrives safely. If I need ya back, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, plan on helping out Reed’s team in any manner they need to ensure the ranch is safe.”

  “You got it.”

  “And tell Ike he should start looking for another job.”

  “Wade, no—”

  “He placed you in danger, telling you to come here. Now I need to get you home and remove some of the protection we have in place in order to make that happen. He was completely out of line.”

  “But—”

  “No, ma’am. There are no buts in this situation.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Jeb told Wade.

  “How soon can you leave?” Mauro asked Trina.

  “Five days. So long as nothing new happens.”

  Avery snorted from the couch. “With our luck, something new is bound to happen by lunch.”

  Something new came in the form of an increase in body count.

  Armstrong and Gray arrived at the house at two
o’clock. Right after Jeb left for the airport with Vicki and Mauro. Their conversation was directed toward Avery.

  “We found our suspect,” Gray stated once everyone was seated.

  “He’s dead. OD in Central Park. He was found two days ago. Came in as a John Doe until he was identified through his tattoos.”

  Avery blinked. “What kind of tattoos?”

  “Do you remember something?” Trina asked softly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He liked his ink, but kept most of it off his face and forearms.”

  “Most?” Lori asked.

  Avery stared off at the wall across the room, her fingers on her good hand scratching the inside of her wrist.

  “Avery?” Shannon’s calm voice seemed to focus her. “Do you remember something?”

  She looked down at her arm before shaking her head. “No.”

  “If you do . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. Call you.”

  The conversation moved to Trina. “Our investigation into Cindy Geist has taken a turn.”

  “Oh?”

  “We found fifty thousand euros in a coffee can in her backyard. Her husband said she’d buried it a year ago as a time capsule. She didn’t tell him what was in it. When he dug it up and found the money, he called us.”

  “Euros?”

  “Strange currency for a woman who’d never been out of the country.”

  Trina felt her skin crawl. “Blood money. She knew something.”

  “That’s our thoughts. She and her husband had applied for passports and were planning a second honeymoon.”

  “Or she was running,” Reed said.

  “She didn’t run fast enough.” Avery’s stone-cold delivery of the facts chilled the room.

  Just after dark, Trina, Wade, and Reed were in Fedor’s office, putting the place back together. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d see if anything was missing without seeing it as it had been when Fedor was alive.

  Reed held a photograph he’d received from the crime scene pictures. How he obtained them, Trina didn’t ask. She was thankful that she didn’t need to see the ones that actually showed Fedor’s lifeless body.

  Although she knew exactly when Reed was looking at those particular pictures. He flipped them quickly when she walked around him to peer at his phone.

  She pushed a plush chair to the far corner of the room, beside a bookcase, a lamp, and a side table.

  Wade and Reed scooted the desk around until it was perfectly centered to the room and just past the three-quarter mark of the second set of windows. The curtains had been replaced . . . after. There was a fireplace on the north side of the room, the hearth clean of ashes and soot. She remembered how Fedor liked to have a fire going on cool nights. He didn’t like the gas-fed options like they had inside the house. “Crackling wood and the smell of smoke is primal,” he’d told her, laughing.

  “You okay?” Wade asked as he came up behind her.

  She blinked her gaze away from the fireplace. “Yup.”

  Reed picked up shards of broken glass and looked at the picture on his phone. “I’m assuming that this used to be this vase.” He turned the phone around and pointed to it.

  Trina shrugged. “Looks right. I couldn’t really tell you.”

  Reed looked from his phone to the desk, and then tweaked the objects on the desk until he got them just right.

  It took a couple of hours, but they finally had the room looking somewhat normal, minus the dark smudges left behind from the investigators searching for prints.

  “Okay.” Reed dropped his arm holding his phone. “We’re done.” He turned a full circle, looked at his phone, and repeated his action several times.

  “It’s all here.” Trina didn’t see one thing missing.

  Reed flipped through a few pictures, tilted his head, and stared at where Fedor’s body would have landed.

  “Let’s talk about what you would see when you normally walked in.”

  Trina pushed the last time out of her head and moved to the door.

  “It was almost always late. Or around dinnertime, if he was home. Most nights he was at the hospital until late. At least toward the end.”

  Wade watched her from the corner of the room, something Trina was acutely aware of.

  She offered him a reassuring smile, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and walked toward the desk.

  The memory of Fedor sitting behind his desk, his eyes fixed on the fire in the hearth, filled her thoughts. Many times he didn’t even realize she was standing there until after she called his name. Not that the office was so big that he could miss her walking in. It’s just that he was so focused on his problems, it was easy to sneak up on him.

  “. . . so he would jump sometimes, when I stood next to the desk.” She stood there now, looking down and trying hard not to see him there dead.

  Alive.

  See him alive, she told herself.

  She rolled her hands.

  “When he wasn’t whittling some new trinket, he played with two silver balls. Like worry stones. It was a habit.”

  Reed flipped through a few pictures. “Did he keep them in here?”

  “This is where I noticed them. It wasn’t something he did when he was at the hospital, so I doubt he kept them with him.”

  Reed pulled open drawers that they’d dropped the contents back inside in their haste to make the room look normal.

  They didn’t find them.

  “They aren’t here. The coroner report should tell what was found on his person when they brought him in. I’ll see if we can get a copy.”

  “Seems like an odd thing to be missing,” Wade said.

  “Were they valuable?” Reed asked.

  “I have no idea. No more than anything else in here, I suspect.”

  “Sentimental? Did they belong to a family member? His mother?”

  Trina shook her head. “His grandfather gave them to him. That and this.” She picked up the inkwell and fountain pen that sat on the corner of his desk. “It belonged to his grandfather on Ruslan’s side.”

  “‘To my pride and joy,’” she read aloud.

  Wade moved beside her.

  “So the grandfather called him his pride and joy. Not his own son,” Reed mused out loud.

  “I didn’t question it. I just know that at some point Fedor pointed out the pen and showed me what was written on it.”

  Reed smiled and set the pen in question back on the desk. “So Grandpa loved his grandson more than his own son, and the only things missing in here are the silver worry stones.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell the police?” Wade asked.

  “We will . . . eventually.”

  “Eventually?”

  Reed sighed. “There are always leaks in investigations. Just like me having the pictures of this office the night Fedor’s body was found, someone else might be listening in on other facts. Two missing silver stones mean nothing unless we find them with someone who shouldn’t have them. Then maybe we will have a direct link to our killer.”

  “I would think stealing anything like that would be a stupid mistake for a killer willing to go through all this effort to hide.”

  “Many perps collect trophies of their kills. In this case, there might be a personal connection. Considering Ruslan is the number one suspect, it wouldn’t be a stretch to pin him for a man who wanted to be his father’s pride and joy . . . and therefore, he grabbed the stones at some point. Could have been the night of Fedor’s death, or maybe last week. It’s hard to say.”

  “Why not let the information leak and sit back and watch? If it’s Ruslan, he might try and get rid of the stones. Or bring them back here,” Trina said.

  Reed paused. “That’s certainly an option, but not until this house is empty. Our murderer has been free for a year. Chances are they think they’re home clear, but now that the police are opening up the investigation again, things will heat up.”

  “We need to get Avery out of here,�
�� Trina muttered.

  “We need to get you out of here.” Wade wrapped his arm around her waist.

  She rested the side of her head on his chest. Leaning on him had become a habit, one she didn’t want to break.

  Reed’s cell phone rang and he turned to take the call. “I’m afraid to ask why you’re calling.”

  Reed looked at Trina and Wade as he spoke.

  He didn’t blink. “Is that so. Why?”

  There was a pause while he listened.

  “Can you tap that feed into our system?” Reed smiled. “Of course you can.”

  He nodded. “Where is Ruslan now?”

  Trina heightened her attention to Reed’s conversation.

  “No, I have New York covered. Do you need backup?” Reed grinned again. “Of course not. You know how to get ahold of me if you do.”

  He hung up.

  “Who was that?” Wade asked.

  “Sasha.”

  “Catwoman?”

  Reed smiled. “Yeah, her. Seems Ruslan had a need to visit his son’s grave.”

  Trina narrowed her eyes. “What? Why?”

  “To place flowers, of all things . . . flowers hiding a camera.”

  “He wants to see who is stopping by?”

  “So it appears. Only we’re attempting to trace the feed back to him.”

  Wade squeezed Trina’s arm. “My mother is on her way back to Texas.”

  Reed held up a hand. “And Ruslan has already left.”

  “Where to?”

  “The flight plan was Mexico City. Sasha is following.”

  Trina turned a full circle in the room. “Ruslan has to be behind this. Behind Fedor’s murder.”

  “Why would a father kill his son?” Wade asked.

  Trina lifted her head. “I don’t know. But I know someone who would.”

  “Who?” Reed asked.

  Trina scanned the room again. “Alice.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s done talking.” And it was high time Trina heard what she had to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  While Trina accompanied Avery to her follow-up appointments with the plastic surgeon and the orthopedist one last time before returning to Texas, Lori and Reed detoured to the law office of Dwight Crockett. Alice’s estate attorney had been the one to say there would be letters arriving throughout the year, and since there had yet to be one such note, Lori decided to probe further.