Reckless Read Free Page B

After fifteen years.
    Now he traded up to a jacket and tie every day and had spiffy new digs in an office park on the water. Earning three times what he had before. He had colleagues in Europe and Asia on his speed dial. He even glanced through the Wall Street Journal every morning, pretending he was keeping abreast of business news, after he checked the sports scores on ESPN.com, of course. He had opened himself up to a new feeling, the arc of his new life seeming to work out. He was, like Annie pushed him to do, trusting the moment. Okay, maybe like he’d said, it was somewhere down deep, somewhere that didn’t come up to the surface very often. But it had been a long time since he felt this way. Boundaryless. Free of regret.
    “Really, I gotta get up,” he said. He lifted her off. “I’ll do the coffee.”
    Annie fell back against the pillows, groaning loudly, “Alright…”
    The news anchor came back on. “And now, back to our lead from the top of the hour…”
    The congestion on the Merritt Parkway had given way to something far more serious.
    “In Connecticut, the town of Greenwich is waking this morning to a horrifying triple murder. An equities trader at a prestigious Wall Street firm was brutally shot to death during the night along with his wife and daughter in their expansive home in backcountry Greenwich. Cindy Marquez is on the scene…”
    Hauck sat up, his years as head of detectives taking over, as the attractive reporter, bundled against the cold, stood in front of two large stone pillars leading to a typical Greenwich home.
    “Kate, the local police believe that the motive behind this family’s tragic end was simply a robbery gone bad. A string of break-ins up here has rocked this affluent community for months. But until now, none had ever turned so violent.
    “Marc Glassman”—a photo flashed on the screen—“who was forty-one and worked as a lead equities trader for troubled Wall Street giant Wertheimer Grant, was found shot downstairs in their posh five-bedroom home off of Cat Rock Road…”
    Hauck sat up. A tremor knifed through him.
    “Hold it a second,” he said, disentangling from Annie’s legs. He stared, his heart rate accelerating, as he edged closer to the screen.
    “The bodies of his wife, April, who was well known in local charities and schools, and their teenage daughter, Rebecca, were found in an upstairs closet. A younger son…”
    Hauck fixed again on the photo. A shot of the family in happy times. His mind raced as the reporter described the grisly scene; he fixed on the husband—slightly receding hair, in a fleece pullover and sunglasses, one arm around his daughter, who was wearing an oversize college sweatshirt and had long brown hair, and the other arm around another child, a son, younger, a mop of yellow hair and smiles.
    Then he focused in on the wife.
    Pretty. Happy looking. In a green baseball cap, her light-brown hair, in a ponytail, peeking through the vent. A beautiful smile that was both proud and tragic at the same time.
    “Oh, God…” Hauck groaned, sucking in a fortifying breath.
    “I know, it’s horrible,” Annie said. She came up behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder, staring past him at the screen. “Are you okay?”
    He nodded silently, not an answer as much as it was all he could do. A heavy weight fell inside him.
    “I knew her,” he said.

CHAPTER THREE
    T he gleaming white Dassault Falcon touched down gracefully at Westchester County Airport, only a stone’s throw from the Greenwich town line.
    The sleek six-passenger jet taxied off the runway to the NetJets private hangar. When the engines cut off, the door opened, and the attached stairway lowered down. An attractive couple stepped off—a stylish woman in her forties, blond hair flowing from underneath her cowboy hat, a fur draped around her shoulders; and her companion, dark complexioned, sunglasses, a little younger, in a navy cashmere blazer and jeans. The woman stopped