Excerpt from the Book
The office was exactly what Detective Kylie “KC” Cassidy expected from a successful downtown attorney.
Dark wood furniture. Leather client chairs. Framed diplomas beside photographs with politicians and judges. Shelves lined with legal volumes that probably hadn’t been opened in years.
At the center of it all sat T. J. Simms.
Motionless.
His high-backed leather chair was angled slightly toward the desk. His suit jacket hung neatly on a coat rack by the door. One hand rested beside an open prescription bottle of oxycodone. Several pills lay scattered across the polished blotter next to a half-full glass of water.
The other hand hung limply at his side.
A handwritten note rested beside the bottle.
Spaulding leaned forward without touching it.
“‘I can’t take the pressure anymore.'”
KC read it again over his shoulder.
No visible injuries. No signs of a struggle. The office was immaculate. Even the wastebasket was empty.
The faint scent of coffee lingered in the room. A second mug sat cold on a credenza behind the desk.
Luna Hunt, the medical examiner investigator, knelt beside the body while KC slowly circled the office, letting the scene speak for itself.
She crouched beside Simms’s chair.
His fingernails were clean. No bruising on his knuckles. No marks around his wrists. The skin around his lips carried the faint bluish tint she’d seen before in overdose victims.
“No defensive wounds that I can see,” Luna said from the opposite side.
“Nothing here either.”
KC stood and studied the prescription bottle.
Filled only three days earlier.
Thirty pills.
Five remained on the desk.
She glanced at the glass of water.
No ring beneath it.
The bottle cap stood upright instead of being carelessly tossed aside.
Everything looked… arranged.
Behind her, Spaulding wandered the office, checking windows, shelves, and framed photographs.
“KC.”
She crossed the room.
Spaulding pointed to a framed picture hanging on the wall. Simms stood beside another man at what looked like a charity event.
KC froze.
She recognized him immediately.
Dr. Nicholas Hale.
A respected forensic pathologist.
A well-known expert witness.
She lowered her gaze to Simms’s cuff.
Something flashed in the light.
“Does that look engraved to you?”
Spaulding leaned closer.
“Could be.”
KC raised her phone and snapped a picture anyway.
“I’d say they knew each other.”
She looked back toward the carefully staged desk.
The pills.
The note.
The perfectly ordered office.
Something about the scene bothered her.
She just couldn’t explain why.
Want to know more about the book?
Some deaths are designed.
The death looks routine. No foul play. No reason to dig.
But Frank Travers has seen enough manufactured coincidences to know when a clean scene feels wrong. When professionals with no addiction history begin dying along eerily similar paths, Orlando Prime is pulled into a pattern spreading quietly across the city.
Someone patient and invisible is engineering the outcomes.
As Frank’s task force chases separate leads through Orlando’s corridors of power, old cases, and carefully hidden networks, the threads begin pointing to the same dark center. KC’s investigation may have found the first crack, but what waits underneath is bigger than one death, one building, or one case.
The closer they get, the more dangerous the truth becomes. Some designs were never meant to be uncovered, and exposing this one may cost more than any of them are prepared to pay.
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About the Author
S.F. Baumgartner crafts fast-paced Christian suspense thrillers, weaving tales of complex characters, secretive operatives, and relentless agents. Her gripping storytelling has earned acclaim, with Living Secrets and Forgotten Secret—Books 1 & 2 of her Mirror Estate series—named Top Picks in the thriller & suspense categories, respectively, at Killer Nashville, and Tangled Secrets—Book 3 of Mirror Estate series—won couple of awards in the Christian Indie Awards and the Incipere Awards. When she’s not plotting her next twist, she’s binge-watching crime TV shows, like NCIS or playing with her cats. Fans of James Patterson’s style, especially those who appreciate short, punchy chapters, will find much to love in her work.
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