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case of it.”

Chapter Four
    Hours later Beck hung up from another call with only dead air on the other end. That happened at least once a day, which was down from about ten times a day when they first moved in. But this one sounded more perv than angry thanks to a heavy-breathing issue.
    Beck tried to imagine some fat dude scratching his belly as he called to make his silent threat. The thought made Beck smile. The piles of paper outlining the long table he’d set up as a makeshift desk in the middle of the large second-floor library didn’t. Leah called the thing, all five feet of it, a sofa table. Beck had no idea what the right name was or how women knew stuff like that. He just knew the piles on top of it grew taller every week.
    Charlie Hanover pissed off a lot of people before he died a year ago at fifty-six and on the run. He’d left a string of women from Seattle to Boston. Four wives, including their mother, and numerous fiancées. Women who once believed the stories he told. Beck didn’t share that burden since Charlie cut out when he was four and didn’t even bother with birthday sightings starting a few years after that.
    Beck scanned the separate stacks—lawsuits, angry letters and the criminal file from the prosecution that was upended by Charlie’s untimely death. The old man apparently told a good story. He’d conned women out of their jewelry and savings accounts, businessmen and businesses out of their investments and more than one town out of their building funds.
    Between the smile and easy charm, women proclaimed Charlie irresistible. He’d focus all his attention on one then take everything on his way out. Days, sometimes weeks, passed before the reality of all a woman lost hit her.
    So, there should be money somewhere. Other people’s money that Beck could find, turn over to authorities and ensure its refund. But no. Despite all the searching Beck hadn’t found a stack of cash anywhere. The FBI didn’t believe that was possible and neither did Beck. The money trail was there. He just had to find it.
    On the surface, Charlie died with less than ten thousand dollars to his name or tied in any way to his social security numbers, the real ones and the ones he “borrowed” when he borrowed everything else. The limited assets included a small bank account, a car in someone else’s name and a fancy watch Charlie likely stole in his travels but wore until his last day. Little else.
    Beck shuffled through the papers that proved how none of Charlie’s money traced to the purchase or running of Shadow Hill. People wanted to believe the house was the answer, but Grandmother’s accounts showed Grandfather’s insurance money going into her bank accounts shortly after his death and that chunk then being used to purchase Shadow Hill. Nothing from Charlie.
    But it all fell apart. A later refinance yanked most of the equity out of the place and Beck couldn’t find a trace of where all that cash went either. Even now the property was on the brink of foreclosure. But that was about to end.
    He opened his desk drawer and took out the check that would save it all, or at least save the house long enough for them to figure out how to earn the money for an ongoing mortgage payment. Twenty-eight thousand nine hundred and three dollars, complete with Callen’s bold signature across the bottom.
    Beck had no idea where his older brother, the one who kicked around from coast to coast, taking odd construction jobs and rarely settling in one place for more than nine months at a time, came up with the funds. Beck dreaded asking. After going years without seeing him, Beck didn’t want to push his oldest brother away. Either brother, actually.
    Beck leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. The thin legs of the chair creaked and groaned beneath him. Despite the armrests and high back, it was the least comfortable piece of furniture ever. Something Leah called an accent chair. Beck was pretty sure she