It was locked shut as well.

Suddenly a dog barked, the sound penetrating him. Hauck stiffened, swallowing his breath, feeling exposed. Then he realized that the bark had come from a neighboring property, a faraway woof that rifled through his bones, hundreds of yards off. Hauck looked out at the obstructed fields. His blood calmed. Nerves…

He continued around the back of the house. He passed a locked shed, a lawn mower with a protective tarp covering it, a few rusted tools scattered about. There was a step up to a cedar back porch. An old Weber grill. A bench-style outdoor table. Two French doors led to the back of the house. The curtains were drawn.

Hauck stepped carefully and paused for a moment, hidden by the curtains, in front of the door. It was locked as well. Panels of divided glass. A bolt drawn. He took his Maglite and tapped on one of the panels near the doorknob. It jiggled in its frame. Loose. He knelt down and hit the panel one more time, hard. The panel split and fell in.

Hand on his gun, he held there for a moment, waiting for any noise. Nothing. He doubted that Dietz had a security tie-in to the local police. He wouldn’t want to take the chance of anybody needlessly poking around.

Hauck reached in through the open panel and wrapped his hand around the knob. He flicked the bolt back and twisted.

The door opened wide.

There was no alarm, no sound emanating. Cautiously, Hauck stepped inside.

He found himself in some kind of shabbily decorated sunroom. Faded upholstered chairs, a wooden table. A few magazines scattered on the table. Forbes. Outdoor Life. Security Today.

Heart pounding, Hauck took hold of his gun and went back through the kitchen, the floorboards creaking with each step. The house was dark, still. He looked into the living room and saw a fancy new Samsung flat-screen.

He was in. He just had no idea what he was searching for.

Hauck found a small room between the living room and the kitchen that was lined with bookshelves. An office. There was a small brick fireplace, a countertop desk with papers strewn about, a computer. A bunch of photos on the wall. Hauck looked. He recognized Dietz. In uniform with other policemen. In fishing clothes holding up an impressive sailfish. Another on some kind of large black-hulled sailing ship with a bare-chested, dark-haired man.

Hauck sifted through some of the papers on the desk. A few scattered bills, a couple of memos with Dark Star letterhead on them. Nothing that seemed to shed any light. The computer was on. Hauck saw an icon on the home page for Gmail, but when he clicked on it, up came a prompt asking for a password. Blocked. He took a shot and clicked the Internet icon, and the Google News homepage came on. He pointed the mouse and looked around to see what sites Dietz had previously logged on to. The last was the American Airlines site. International travel. Several seemed like standard trade sites. Farther down was something called the IAIM. He clicked-the International Association of Investment Managers.

Hauck felt his blood stir.

Harbor Capital, Charles Friedman’s firm, had been queried in.

He sat in Dietz’s chair and tried to follow the search. A Web file on the firm came up. A description of their business, energy-related portfolios. Assets under management, a few performance charts. A short history of the firm with a bio page of the management team. A photo of Friedman.

That wasn’t all.

Falcon Partners, the investment partnership out of the BVIs, had been queried, too.

Now Hauck’s blood was racing. He realized he was on the right track. The IAIM page merely provided a listing for Falcon. There was no information or records. Only a contact name and address in Tortola, which Hauck copied down. Then he swung around to the papers on Dietz’s desk. Messages, correspondence, bills.

There had to be something here.

In a plastic in-box tray, he found something that sent his antennae buzzing. A photocopy of a list of names, from the National Association of Securities Dealers, of people who had received licenses to trade securities for investment purposes. The list ran on for pages, hundreds of names and securities firms, from all across the globe. Hauck scanned down-what would Dietz be looking for?

Then, all of a sudden, it occurred to him just what was unique about the list of licenses.

They had all been granted within the past year.

As Hauck paged through it, he saw that several names had been circled. Others were crossed out, with handwritten notes in the margins. There were hundreds. A long, painstaking search to narrow them down.

Then it hit him, like a punch in the solar plexus.

Karen Friedman wasn’t the only person who thought her husband was alive!

There was a printer-copier on the credenza adjacent to the desk, and Hauck placed the security list along with Dietz’s notes in it. He kept looking. Amid some scattered sheets, he found a handwritten note on Dark Star stationery.

The Barclays Bank. In Tortola.

There was a long number under it, which had to be an account number, then arrows leading to other banks-the First Caribbean Bank. Nevis. Banc Domenica. Names. Thomas Smith. Ronald Torbor. It had been underlined three times.

Who were these people? What was Dietz looking for? Hauck had always assumed that Charles and Dietz were connected. The hit-and-runs…

That’s when it struck him. Jesus…

Dietz was searching for him, too.

Hauck picked up a scrawled sheet of paper from the tray, some kind of travel itinerary. American Airlines. Tortola. Nevis. His skin started to feel all tingly.

Dietz was ahead of him. Did he possibly already know where Charles was?

He placed in a copy of the same sheet in the printing bay and pressed. The machine started warming up.

Then suddenly there was a noise from outside the window. Hauck’s heart slammed to a stop.

Wheels crunching over gravel, followed by the sound of a car door slamming.

Someone was home.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Hauck’s blood became ice. He went over to the window and peeked through the drawn curtains. Dietz’s office faced the wrong direction; there was no way to determine who it was. He removed the Sig 9 from his belt and checked the clip. He was completely out of bounds here-no warrant, no backup.

Inside, Hauck was just praying it wasn’t Dietz.

He heard a knock at the door. Someone shouting out, “Phil?” Then, after a short pause, something that made his pulse skyrocket. The sound of a key being inserted in the front door, the lock opening. A man’s voice calling.

“Phil?”

Hauck hid behind the office door. He wrapped his fingers around the handle of the Sig and stood pressed against the door. He had no way out. Whoever it was had already come inside.

Hauck heard the sound of footsteps approaching, the creak of bending wood on the floorboards. “Phil? You here?”

His heart started going wild. Panicked, his mind flashed to whether or not his Bronco might have been seen. He realized that sooner or later whoever this was, if he made his way around the house, would notice the smashed rear windowpane. Would find his way back to the office. Whoever this was had access. On the other hand, Hauck was there totally unlawfully. He had no warrant. He hadn’t notified the local police. He would be cited just for bringing in his gun. The footsteps came closer. He wasn’t sure what to do. Only that he’d gotten himself into a sizable amount of shit, and it was getting deeper by the second. The man was walking around the house. Should he make a run for it?

Then something happened that sent Hauck’s pulse into a frenzy.

The fucking printer began to print.

The pages Hauck had fed into the tray, they were suddenly going through. The hum of the machine was like an alarm bell.