Feeling they’d done their duty to highlight the obvious, they’d immediately left the police station, claiming they needed something to eat, knowing Hawes would ask the county sheriff to send units to the two cabins.

Deep in his gut, Chris knew the killer was returning to the original scene of the crime. And hopefully he had Violet with him. The notebooks had suddenly become less important. One look at Gianna’s expression in the police station, and he’d known she suspected the same.

“We need to tell them what we’re doing,” Gianna muttered. “We should tell Hawes that we’re going up there. Although I know the county sheriff will get there first and won’t let us get near the cabins until they decide it’s safe.”

Her phone vibrated. “It’s Leo,” she said with surprise. “Saul must have asked him to call me.”

She answered and was quiet for ten seconds. “Hang on, Leo. I’m going to put you on speaker, and I want Chris to hear all of this.” She tapped her screen and held the phone out so Chris could hear.

“I can’t believe this is going on,” continued Leo. “When Saul called me and told me about Violet, I thought I was going to lose it. I told him I had no idea this could go so far.”

Chris looked at Gianna. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line, her gaze on the phone.

“What could go so far?” she asked.

“Richard showed up at my house a while back.”

“What? You knew he was still alive?” asked Chris. Did everyone know but Gianna?

“No! It shocked the hell out of me. I thought it was some sort of prank at first.”

“Why didn’t you contact me?” begged Gianna.

A deep sigh sounded through the phone. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Your father convinced me that you shouldn’t know about him yet, but he had plans to come forward once the danger was gone. Your father believed that if you knew he was alive, it’d lead your mother’s killers to you.”

“I think that happened anyway,” stated Chris.

“Richard had a lot of questions about what had happened decades ago. He was clearly confused, Gianna. I didn’t see the harm in respecting the time Richard wanted before he let you know he was still alive. I knew something was wrong with him, and your uncle Saul just explained his old head injury to me.”

“My father was going to contact me?” whispered Gianna.

Leo continued speaking. “I think our South African investor hired someone to murder Richard. The investor had been irate when I tried to back out of the original funding deal. I really didn’t want to give up on the money, but Richard was adamant.”

“Of course he was,” Gianna snapped. “The company was dealing in illegal arms.”

“I know, I know.” Leo paused. “But you don’t know how badly we needed those funds. We were on the brink of going under. I told Richard it was too late to back out. He was furious. I didn’t know he went to the investor on his own and tried to get us out of it, but I’ve always had my suspicions about his car accident,” Leo said quietly. He broke into sobs. “Oh Lord. Your mother, Gianna . . . and nearly you and Richard. I didn’t know . . . and now Violet. What did I do?”

“You should have said something to Saul or me as soon as he showed up,” stated Gianna.

Anger washed over Chris and he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Leo was lucky he wasn’t standing in front of him.

“Richard was convinced the threat was still relevant. He wasn’t making a lot of sense the day he came to see me. He seemed to think you were still a child.”

“You could have done the right thing all those years ago and not taken the money!” Gianna steamed.

“I didn’t know if the rumors about the illegal arms were true back then,” Leo argued.

Gianna laughed in an eerie way that made Chris’s skin crawl. “That was so typical of you, Leo. Unless you saw it with your own eyes, you didn’t believe it. No wonder my father went to see you in person. You would never have believed he was alive if he’d simply called.”

“What did Richard say when he showed up?” Chris asked.

“He told me he had proof of some murders ordered by the owner of the South African company.”

Silence filled the cab of the truck.

“You’re talking about decades-old crimes?” Gianna asked. “That happened on another continent?”

“No. Murders here in the States. Starting with your mother.”

Gianna sucked in her breath.

“Wait,” Chris said. “You said murders . . . plural. More than Gianna’s mother?”

“Yes,” Leo said. “It appears this company tried investing in several up-and-coming businesses in the States around the same time as they invested in Berssina Tech. Some of the owners were resistant like Richard had been. It appears this investor has one solution for getting his own way: eliminate the issue.”

“He had other people killed?” blurted Gianna. “Because they didn’t want to do business with him? What century was this?” she said bitterly.

“Last century,” Leo replied with irony. “But it appears it has continued into the twenty-first. I reached out to my South African partner after Richard visited me. He laughed off my questions about Richard’s car accident. I tried to find Richard to ask for the proof of the murders, but he’d crawled back under one of his rocks. I wrote him off and assumed all of Richard’s ramblings could be attributed to mental illness and did nothing. Today was the first I’d heard of Richard again.”