The Love Killings by Robert Ellis Read Free Book Online Page A

Matt’s homes away from home in LA.
    He stepped away from the window. There were no hallways in the apartment, each room opening to the next. He could see that the front bedroom had been converted into a study and shared a bath with the rear bedroom. Matt walked into the room, checked the mattress, then passed through the door into the living room.
    Everything felt good, and he was more than grateful to be here instead of a hotel room.
    He tossed his duffel bag on the bed. When he came back for his laptop and briefcase, he heard the elevator and looked through the peephole.
    It was that man he’d seen on the street. The man with the knapsack. He was walking down the hall, searching for a key on his key ring. Matt watched him unlock the door to the next apartment and announce to someone inside that he was home. When the door closed, Matt got out of his jacket, found the remote, and switched on the TV.
    CNN had just cut to a string of commercials. Matt muted the sound and set his laptop up on the coffee table. Then he pulled his shaving kit out of his briefcase and ripped it open. The gunshot wounds were beginning to blister through his chest, the real pain probably an hour off. He sorted through his medications, passing over the Vicodin and opening the bottle of Advil. But as he knocked back two capsules with a swig of beer, he glanced at the TV and thought he might choke.
    It was his father, M. Trevor Jones.
    Matt grabbed the remote and turned up the sound. It looked like the media had caught up to him as he exited a building in New York and tried to get to the limousine waiting for him in the street. The building was set back from the sidewalk and had an unusually large open-air entrance, so reaching the limo wouldn’t be easy.
    Within a few seconds, Matt caught the gist of the story and stopped listening. He already knew why his father was being hounded by the media and didn’t need to listen to a newsreader from CNN repeat a story that had been in the papers for weeks. His father was negotiating a financial settlement with the Department of Justice, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve Bank for an unspecified amount that many believed would exceed one billion dollars. His father’s bank had been caught playing games with mortgages to veterans and active members of the military. Overcharges, hidden fees, and improper foreclosure practices had forced thousands of people out of their homes. The investigation had been completed, and now it was time for dear old Dad, the King of Wall Street, to pay up.
    But something else was going on here. Matt stepped closer to the TV. The camera was handheld and bouncing up and down in the chaos. Matt looked at his father’s face—the man’s teeth were clenched, his arms up, his head down—but it wasn’t his father making the push through the crowd. It was the two men beside him that were clearing the way. Both of them were wearing suits and appeared hard and tough, the reporters poking his father with their microphones completely outmatched.
    Matt took another step closer to the screen.
    What concerned him wasn’t their appearance or physical strength. It was the fact that both men were armed. Their jackets were open, and Matt could see the pistols strapped to their shoulders.
    His father had hired a pair of bodyguards. Armed bodyguards.
    This was new, and Matt didn’t believe that it had anything to do with his father’s financial troubles. His bank could easily afford to pay a billion-dollar fine. This was about Matt. His father knew that he was coming. Matt could sense it. His father had begun to prepare.

CHAPTER 9
    The FBI’s field office occupied most of the federal building at 600 Arch Street. It was a ten-story low-rise building that shared underground parking with the federal courthouse and had been named after William J. Green Jr., a beloved congressman from Philadelphia who died young and fathered a son who would later become the