Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

Kendra led him into the elevator and punched the second-floor button. In less than a minute, she leaned out the door and looked down the hallway. “This is our stop.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

They followed the wheel marks on the carpet until they ended in front of a condo door.

“That’s a surprise,” he said.

“Not really.” She knocked on the door.

After a moment, Olivia answered. “Good morning, Kendra.” She cocked her head, obviously picking up Perry’s breathing. “Who’s your friend?”

“Detective Raymond Perry, SDPD,” he replied.

“Oooh.” She was still smiling. “Am I under arrest?”

“Only if you stole a dolly cart of files from my condo this morning,” Kendra said.

“Guilty as charged.” Olivia swung the door open wide to reveal the dolly and three boxes of files, with folders stacked all over the large wraparound desk that dominated the condo’s living room area. A muscular young man stood in front of the desk, feeding a sheaf of papers into a scanner. “Though I don’t think the charges will stick,” Olivia said. “I have a distinct recollection that you wanted these to be scanned.”

“Thank God,” Kendra said, rushing toward the file boxes. “They’re all here!”

“Of course they are,” Olivia said. “I have some East Coast radio interviews today, so Zack came in early this morning. We went straight up to your place. You weren’t home, so I let myself in with my key. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I’m overjoyed.”

Olivia smiled. “That’s a little extreme, but okay. We brought them up here and Zack started scanning everything. He’s good. He’s almost finished.”

Zack smiled at them. “Only two folders to go.”

“You are good,” Kendra said. “When you two were down there, did you notice anything messy or out of place?”

“Like what?” Zack said. “It looked fine to me.”

“What time was that?” Perry asked.

“About seven thirty,” Olivia said. “Like I said, Zack came in early. What’s this about?”

“Someone ransacked my condo this morning. I think they were after these files. The woman I got them from was murdered in her home last night.”

“Holy shit,” Zack blurted out. He looked apologetically at Olivia. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re learning. ‘Holy shit’ is entirely appropriate in an amazing number of workplace situations.” She faced Kendra. “You’re telling me that someone ransacked your place between the time we took these and now? And that person may be a killer?”

“Yes. You and Zack are probably the only reason they don’t have these files right now.”

Perry motioned toward the file folders. “We’re going to take these. They may have some relevance to our murder investigation. We’ll just gather them up, and—”

“After he finishes scanning,” Kendra said.

Perry shot her an annoyed stare. “Did you just hear the part about this being possible evidence in a murder case?”

“I did.” She turned to Zack. “Keep scanning.”

“Do it,” Olivia whispered to him.

Zack quickly fed another stack of file pages into the scanner.