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Nick sifted through the bowl of rice with great care, placing each piece of the cell phone on a microfiber towel he had found in a drawer Kelly watched over Nick’s shoulder When they had all the pieces, Nick began putting it back together

He held the reassembled phone in his palm, and he and Kelly both scowled at it

"Let’s hope it’s charged," Kelly said

Nick turned it on and held his breath The sound was garbled and the screen was a digitized mess as the phone powered on, but they could sort ofon it Nick first went to the list of recent calls Kelly scraet his own phone out and take pictures of the screen They got partial lists of Milton’s last calls, then es Some of theh to an tosound

"Oh, that’s a bad sound," Kelly said

"No, it’s not"

"Yes, it is"

"Just shut up and keep taking pictures"

"That’s an ‘I’ to blow up’ sound," Kelly insisted

"I know, but we only have one chance to get this shit"

The phone popped, and they both ju sound, and after the first threat of fire, Nick dropped the phone into the bowl of rice It sparked and fizzled, and the s aroth cleanser in the kitchen

Kelly huffed and sniffed at the bowl of rice "Told you"

Nick glared at his profile "What did we get?"

Kelly flipped through the photos of the textup a ht How the hell was he getting service to send these texts?"

Nick leaned over and squinted at the photos They were basically poor copies of a rough original, and soh the last dozen or so texts painted a pretty clear picture, and it wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks "He was setting up a buy"

"A buy? Like, what, he was selling soe "It’s shorthand He was ht, and he wanted money wired Apparently his buyer had cash instead and they were arguing over payment I can’t tellthe defense contract technology Stanton’s corimly "Yeah, I do Odds are he either tried to cheat theuessing they thought he had the information on him, but he didn’t That’s why they ca here? A flash drive? A h to s if that’s where they were looking And his rooed "I’m not a techie We’ll take it to Garrett, see if he knows See what they’ve got off that laptop"

Kelly nodded and stuffed his phone back into his pocket They left the mess they’d made There was no one to colanced at the freezer as they headed for the steps "Hey, maybe one of them will donate a liver to your dad"

Nick looked over his shoulder at Kelly, his eyes wide

"I’ in there," Kelly said, coet one for you"

Nick gaped at him "How the hell did you ever pass your psych evals?"

"I cheated off your papers"

Nick rolled his eyes and started up the stairs

"The Navy gives bubble tests When in doubt, go with C"

"Kelly"

"Get it? Navy? The sea?"

"Kels, shut up"

"Oh, cohed, unable to stop himself

Kelly plucked at his shirt as they headed up the steps, stopping hi another joke But Kelly was turning to head into the kitchen again "You know, the cook hadn’t been dead but for a few minutes e ca toward the botto with that "How’d the killer get out?"

"Yeah" Kelly glanced up at Nick "The steps are the only way in or out, ould have seen the from the hall upstairs Or hell, maybe even passed them on the steps"

Nick waited a breath, then stepped to stand beside Kelly

"You think it’s possible they hid well enough for Ty to miss them?"

"No," Nick said i at the bottom to look around the lass faces, and the counters and islands all had open shelves beneath "There’s nowhere to hide down here, not unless you get into one of the ovens"

Kelly grunted "And there was definitely no one in the freezer; I went in there"

Nick paced a few steps into the kitchen, craning his head to seek out iuess There’sI don’t know You’d have to be really slick"

"Or small," Kelly added "I bet a woman could have hid down here"

"But someone that s him on that meat hook There were two people No way they could have hid, not fro

Nick’s attention turned froht white counters to the stone walls of the roo the architecture for the first time, the way the room itself was laid out "This was a chapel," he said in surprise

Kelly glanced up, pursing his lips "So?"

"Well, a Scottish church built in the late nineteenth century, there would have been a pulpit on the right side of the chancel Sometimes the pulpit had a space beneath it or behind it"

"How do you know that?" Kelly asked

"I think I saw it in one of those houseHe retained all kinds of normally useless inforround noise when he orking He’d never lost a trivia gaht side?"

Nick pointed toward the wall that abutted the rest of the house They scanned over the stone carvings, the saels they’d seen on the fireplace in their bedroo that looked like a hidden or raised space where the pulpit would have stood, but he saw sole" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>