Read Online When Love Intrudes (When the Mission Ends) by Christi Snow - Free Book Online Page B

remember, shirts are optional at Toni’s Bistro (where our motto is “We don’t kill the customers.”)
    Have a great day, Detective.
    ~Toni (the one trying not to kill you)
    P.S. There’s hot coffee in the carafe on the counter.
    Brian laughed and peeked in the box to find a variety of a dozen different types of doughnuts. Yeah, he’d definitely get out of shape quick if he made this a habit, but he grabbed a chocolate-covered one anyway. He’d leave the rest of the box for the teenager who would probably wipe them out before afternoon.
    Grabbing a travel mug out of the cabinet, he filled it with coffee and then headed out to his truck. He needed to swing by Mark Hunter’s house on the way into the police station and see if he could figure out what happened to the guy and their meeting last night. It was probably too much to hope that Mark was ready to confess all and turn on his friends and brother, but with the missing DNA evidence, Brian could hope.
    The twins lived together in a house in the older part of town. They both were college students, although based on Matt’s transcript he was making a career out of flunking and skipping his classes.
    When Brian pulled up to the house, he examined it. Honestly, it was cleaner and neater than he expected. The lawn was trimmed and edged, with no visible trash or junk. There were even flowers in the flower-beds. An older model truck was parked in the driveway, and all the blinds for the house were closed.
    As he approached the front door, he noticed that it wasn’t closed tightly. A chill of premonition rolled over his spine as he pulled his service revolver out of his shoulder holster. He knocked lightly on the door as he pushed it open. Not a single sound came from the interior of the house. He called out, “Mark or Matt, are you guys here?”
    No answer.
    Moving quickly and silently, he scanned the living room. Nothing but a couple of empty beer bottles. The kitchen was completely clean. On the surface, the house appeared to be deserted.
    He crept down the hall, moving cautiously from door to door of the bedrooms and bathroom. Besides unmade beds and a few dirty clothes lying about, there wasn’t any sign of the guys who lived here.
    He headed toward a sunroom. The shadow of swaying feet moved along the wall, cast from the bright morning sun. Stepping into the doorway, he found Mark’s body swinging from a noose that had been tied around the exposed rafters of the room. The open, unblinking eyes told him that he was too late.
    Closing his eyes for a moment to reflect against the waste of it all, he pulled out his cell phone to call it in. After he called the precinct, he examined the room to see if he could spot any evidence before the CSI guys arrived. There wasn’t any sign of visible struggle, but there also wasn’t a suicide note that he could see, yet. Mark was not a small guy and it wouldn’t have been easy to string him up there if he hadn’t been cooperating. So was this a suicide? If so, why had the front door been ajar?
    There was no doubt the guy had been upset last night, but why would Mark ask to meet him and then kill himself? That didn’t add up, unless somehow he was trying to make sure Brian found him instead of his twin brother, Matt.
    The medical examiner, forensics, and Eddie all showed up within minutes of each other. As the forensics and medical examiner teams did their thing, he and Eddie watched.
    “So what does your gut tell you?” Eddie asked.
    “He was upset last night, to the point of almost panic, but I didn’t get depressed or suicidal vibes from him. This doesn’t sit well with me. I just don’t feel like it was a suicide, but if it wasn’t, how would someone else get him strung up there?”
    “Have you seen any sign of his brother yet?”
    “No, and that’s definitely a huge question mark. If Matt was here last night, how did he miss this? We’ll have to wait for the ME to give us an approximate time of death.  We