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Ash spentthe rest of the afternoon on the Internet, reading through articles about Victoria Stokes.

He had a peripheral understanding of the governor’s politics and the direction in which she’d been leading the state for the past three years. But those were things that had already happened.

Right now, he was more interested in her current initiatives. What social issues was she tackling? What had she done to fire up the opposition recently? Was she on record to veto anything that would put her in someone’s crosshairs?

Ash snorted. It seemed everything was crosshairs-worthy these days. But he would look to see if one target stood out among the others.

The governor had signed twenty-two executive orders last year, six so far this year, and countless bills. All pretty standard. Real estate, background checks, drug penalties, nature trails, Indigenous rights; the list went on.

It would take months to root through everything, which is why he’d leave them for the State’s investigators to evaluate.

When his search failed to produce anything heavy enough to trigger his red flag meter, he moved on to Kayla Krowne.

While he waited for the Secretary of State’s website to load, Ash stared at the murder board he’d set up against the side wall of his cubicle.

In the center of the board, he’d affixed photos of both Victoria and Kayla. He couldn’t shake the idea that Kayla had been the original target and Victoria an unintended casualty. Yet he knew better than to build a case toward a hypothesis.

He would follow the evidence. The “spokes” on his board.

Instead of one wheel, his board had two. He would see where each one led. Would they veer off in opposite directions? Follow the same path? Or intersect?

At the moment, pitiful few spokes jutted out from the center of either wheel. But one very important, very unusual clue—a picture of the pearl earring—hovered between the two.

What did it mean, if anything? Had the killer placed it in the tree as a calling card? Or had it been there for months?

From his brief inspection, he ruled out the latter. The earring didn’t appear to have been in the elements long. Maybe a drunken socialite had pinned it there the night of the benefit as a joke.

When rich people got bored, they did weird shit. Sometimes illegal shit. Sometimes dangerous shit.

Sometimes shit for shit’s sake.

An hour later, and his mind once again wandered back to his recent phone conversation with Detective Morgan. Not to the fact that forensics hadn’t been able to lift any latent prints from the earring. No surprise there, though it had been impossible not to harbor a thimble of hope.

What he hadn’t expected to learn about was the blood spatter discovered outside the gazebo. Forensics had located four fresh droplets streaked across the base of a tree, approximately eight feet from where Ash had found the pearl stud.

The finding made no sense to him. Did the shooter have a run-in with a rose bush? He couldn’t imagine a professional killer, capable of a head shot, would be careless enough to leave DNA behind.

Morgan had also mentioned that forensics found evidence of a fight. Had there been more than one assassin in the gardens? Had someone gotten cold feet, and Plan B was initiated? Or had the disturbance been caused by wild animals or a secret tryst gone bad?

Ash reined in his vivid imagination. He’d learn more once the crime lab finished their analysis.

Redirecting his attention to the monitor, he pulled up the most recent Lobbyist Directory, which included a monthly catalog of lobbyists and their registered principals. He scrolled down the alphabetical list until he located Krowne, Kayla and read through the client names, not really knowing what he was looking for, but hoping he’d recognize it when he saw it.

All appeared to be organizations, rather than individuals. Avalon Addiction Recovery Care, AI for Tomorrow, Benoit Public Utility, Carolina Game Reserve, but not Engel County School Board or any other school board, for that matter.

He could guess what sort of lobbying she was doing for each principal based on their company names. All except one.

HCVS.

No Inc., no action fund, no nothing tacked on the end. Just four letters.

Ash swam through his memories for any mention of HCVS. When he surfaced, he had nothing to show for it.

Had Kayla, or a member of her team, used the acronym as a shortcut? Or were the letters the company’s actual name? He skimmed the full list of Krowne and Associates’ sixteen principals. Some of the names were quite long, so shortening HCVS to an acronym wasn’t consistent with how they’d registered other clients.

Unless the company had been registered by a new intern who didn’t know any better and decided to speed up tedious paperwork.

Ash could sympathize.

He searched the Krowne and Associates’ directories for the past twelve months, then expanded to two years, then three. HCVS appeared in every one, going back a decade.

Opening another browser tab, he typed in the four letters and hit enter. A melting pot of results popped up. Human Coronavirus Sensitivity, Hamilton Valley Community Services, High Conservation Values, Hickory County Virtual School, and High Clarity Vanilla Stable, which seemed to be a vegetable soap base.

He dug deeper into each hit. All were out-of-state. None of them seemed likely candidates for Kayla’s clients.

But he couldn’t be certain. He assumed she focused on issues affecting North Carolina, but that’s all it was, an assumption.

Ash sat back and released a frustrated breath. A voice inside his head nagged him to stop wasting his time on the acronym company. Someone in Kayla’s office had probably taken a shortcut while filling out the lobbying registration form. Simple as that.

Form.

Ash shot forward in his chair and clicked back over to the Secretary of State’s website. He drilled down, link after link, until he came across their lobbying division database.

He selected the current year’s term, searched for Kayla Krowne, then HCVS. A number of PDF icons appeared.

He double-clicked on the first one, and voilà!

In the second section of the Lobbyist Registration Statement, the first line requests the complete name of the principal.

HCVS.

Ash cursed, feeling as if he’d won the lottery, only to learn the jackpot was four bucks. He read further and smiled. The form listed an address and the contact details of the principal’s representative, Larissa Maywood.

Finally, something he could work with.

He snapped a screenshot of her information before scrolling farther down. A grid of codes and subjects filled the page, requiring the lobbyist to select their lobbying areas.

Typed into the columned rows were codes ten through sixteen, which translated to elections, equal rights, government financing, and governments at all levels—county, federal, municipal, and state.

HCVS was starting to feel a lot like a political action committee, also known as a PAC. Organizations who shelled out big money to sway votes and legislators’ minds.

Ash wondered how far back the Secretary of State kept lobbyist expense records. He backed out of the form and pulled up something called a compilation report. The spreadsheet had over four thousand rows of expenses, sorted by principals.

He located HCVS and frowned. Next to the principal’s name was a column for the lobbyists each organization worked with. Many of the organizations listed five or six.

But not HCVS. All of their initiatives went to one lobbyist.

Kayla Krowne.

Ash followed the row totaling the expenses paid out for the previous year. His eyes widened. He scrolled up, then down several pages. None of the other organizations came close to the two million dollars HCVS had paid to Krowne and Associates.

“What the hell are you working on, Kayla,” he whispered.

After several minutes of staring and coming up with no answers, he scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Sweet Jesus.” In a matter of seventy-two hours, Kayla Krowne had become embroiled in two significant cases, both of which he was investigating.

He wished he could pawn both onto a colleague, but he knew if given the option, he’d keep them. Despite how he felt about Kayla, she was especially important to Liv and Phin.

Which meant she was important to him.