Lance hurried to catch up with him. Almost at the front door, he caught Sharp’s arm. “Take it slow.”
“Something is wrong.” Sharp paused and inhaled. The hollow pressure in his chest intensified.
“Then take precautions.” Lance dug into the pocket of his cargos and offered Sharp a pair of gloves. “We don’t want to destroy evidence.”
Reluctantly, Sharp took them and tugged them onto his hands. He didn’t want to think about a crime having been committed in Olivia’s house.
Lance was more than his partner; he was the closest thing Sharp had to a son. When Lance was ten, his father had vanished. Sharp had been the Scarlet Falls detective assigned to the case. He hadn’t found Lance’s dad back then, and when he’d discovered Lance’s mother suffered from crippling anxiety and was incapable of handling her husband’s disappearance or raising her son, Sharp had stepped in to help.
He had also hit rock bottom at the time, with a divorce and the death of his partner in the line of duty. In the end, Lance and his mom had become Sharp’s family. He’d dated over the next two decades, but he hadn’t let anyone else get close—until Olivia.
Who would have thought a reporter would sneak into his heart?
But she had.
He swallowed his fear and unlocked Olivia’s front door using the key she’d given him a few weeks before. He opened the door and stepped inside. Lance followed Sharp down the hall to the kitchen. The alarm system beeped. Sharp punched the deactivation code into the panel.
“Can you see the system history?” Lance looked over Sharp’s shoulder.
Sharp pushed buttons and read the screen. “At two thirteen this morning, the alarm was deactivated and rearmed as Away.” He moved to the center of the kitchen, his critical gaze scanning the room. “Where could she have gone in the middle of the night?” His ignorance of her current work felt acute.
“Has she ever slipped out that late at night before?”
“Not that I know of.” But then, Sharp wasn’t with her every night. They spent a couple of nights a week together. Then each retreated to their own private spaces.
“Would she call you if she was going to meet someone that late?”
“Apparently not.” Sharp brushed off his irritation. Olivia didn’t owe him a call before she went out. He wouldn’t have notified her if he had to work in the middle of the night.
Sharp walked around the kitchen. “She was researching new topics for another book. That’s all I know.”
He had to face facts. He’d been sleeping with Olivia for months, and yet he knew very little about her.
Last night’s phone call was the first sign she was willing to share her research with him. They slept together but kept their work to themselves.
“Where does she keep her phone, keys, and purse when she’s home?” Lance circled the kitchen, scanning surfaces.
“On the island.” Sharp pointed. The square of recycled glass was empty. “She carries her phone from room to room with her most of the time. In the middle of the night, it would be on her nightstand.”
He headed for the hallway. Lance stayed close. They walked into Olivia’s bedroom. The covers were on the floor.
“Olivia always makes the bed as soon as she gets up.” Sharp felt his voice crack, and he took care not to touch any of the surfaces. In case Olivia’s house was a crime scene, he needed to preserve evidence.
The words crime scene pooled fear in his gut.
“Maybe she was in a hurry,” Lance said. Morgan and Lance lived with three children, two dogs, a nanny, Morgan’s grandfather, and a seemingly endless string of renovation projects. For them, chaos was more normal than order. But Olivia thrived on organization.
“Olivia likes to keep things neat and organized.” Sharp walked out of the bedroom. On the surface, the house looked as expected. He went into the second bedroom, which she’d converted into an office. Her laptop sat in the center of the desk. He lifted the lid. It was password protected. “I have a key to her house and the code to her security system, but she hasn’t shared her laptop password.”
Their professions required them to maintain a level of confidentiality. Sharp certainly hadn’t shared any client information with Olivia. She had essentially morphed from a journalist into a true crime writer over the past five years. But in the back of his mind, she was still a reporter—a label that made him wary.
Lance went back through the kitchen to the doorway that led into the laundry room. “Sharp! Over here.”
Sharp hurried to join him in the narrow hallway. Lance pointed to a door. “Is that the garage?”
Sharp nodded. His gaze followed Lance’s pointer finger to a dark-red smear on the white molding around the door.
“Could be blood,” Lance said.
“There’s only one way to find out. Do you have an RSID kit in your car?” Sharp asked, his face drawing tight.
A Rapid Stain Identification Kit would detect the presence of human blood.
“No,” Lance said. “Because we are not cops anymore. We don’t swab and possibly contaminate evidence. I’ll call Stella. She’ll handle it. I’ll call Morgan too. She might notice things we haven’t.”
Lance stepped back to make the calls.
Sharp crouched and took a long look at the molding around the door. Small scratches marred the wood. His gaze traveled down the length of the door. Something was stuck in the soft caulk around the frame. It was bright pink. A broken fingernail was embedded in the bright-white sealant.
Sharp’s heart squeezed as he remembered the color of Olivia’s nails when she had stroked his bare chest two nights before.
Bright pink.
His chest tightened, and he pressed a hand to it.
“Sharp!” Lance grabbed him by the arm.
“I’m OK.” He gestured to the fingernail.
Lance examined the caulk, then straightened, his face grim. “Morgan will be here soon. Stella didn’t answer her phone. I left a message. Do you want to call the SFPD?”
“And tell them what?” Sharp asked. “That Olivia missed one appointment, didn’t make her bed, and broke a nail on her way out of the house? We both know that’s not enough to launch a missing persons case.”
He ran out to Lance’s Jeep for a flashlight. He would touch as little as possible, but no one could stop him from searching for clues.
When he returned to the laundry room, Lance had marked the locations of the blood and the broken fingernail with yellow sticky notes.
He tested the garage door. “The dead bolt is locked, which means it was either locked from the inside or the key was used.” He turned the dead bolt and went into the garage. It was as tidy as the rest of Olivia’s house. Her bicycle stood in a rack near the wall. Opposite the empty space where she parked her car, some basic tools were organized on a pegboard over a small worktable. The concrete was swept clean. Sharp shone the flashlight on the floor. No footprints.
“I thought she liked to garden.” Lance scanned the space. “There isn’t even any dirt in here.”
“There’s a potting shed out back where she keeps the messy stuff.” Something shiny caught Sharp’s attention. He bent down.
“What is it?” Lance asked.