"Evie's husband," Cole repeated, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. The word husbanded landed like a blade between his ribs. "Geoffrey Hale owned the hotel were Kira worked."
"Yes."
The room went very still. Cole stared at the folder in his hands. At Kira's autopsy photos. At her face—pale and perfect and gone—and something inside him cracked open like a fault line splitting bedrock.
"Tell me everything," he said. "Right now. From the beginning."
Preacher folded his hands on the desk. "Eight months into her job at the Hale Continental, Kira called me. Said she'd found something. Financial documents she wasn't supposed to see—wire transfers, shell companies, offshore accounts. Millions of dollars moving through the hotel's books in ways that didn't add up." He pause
