Simon Says Die

following close behind.
    â€œNone of you should be here.” Pierce pulled a chair back from the grouping in the family room so Austin could scoot his wheelchair up. “You did more than enough yesterday, helping with the search. You can’t have had more than a couple of hours sleep.”
    â€œAs ugly as you look this morning,” Braedon said, “I’m sure we got more sleep than you did.”
    Alex shook his head at Braedon. “Matt guilted us into coming. He wants us to work on Madison’s renovations. He thinks all the problems B-and-B has had over here are because someone was trying to stop us from digging up the yard, that if we work on the footers, we might find something important that will help with the investigation.”
    â€œI should have thought of that,” Pierce said.
    â€œWe’ve got a team outside right now getting it started,” Matt said. He crossed over to sit next to the lieutenant. “I want to know what you’ve done so far to find her.”
    Hamilton raised a brow and glanced across at Pierce. “He thinks he can figure out where she is when half my police force hasn’t had any luck?”
    â€œApparently he does.” Pierce smiled his first smile since Madison’s disappearance.
    Matt went into the front room and grabbed the map off the table. He came back in the family room and plopped down again. “What are all these red circles for?”
    Hamilton eyed him much like he would a rattlesnake, but he answered Matt’s questions.
    Alex sat beside Pierce. “I told them the police probably wouldn’t want anyone in the backyard with everything going on, but I think they all feel a bit helpless. If they can work on the renovations, it will make them feel needed.”
    â€œI don’t see any problem with them working out back, as long as they stay out of everyone’s way. The police are finished back there.”
    â€œLet me know if there’s anything you need.” He stood. “Come on, boys. It’s time to teach an old lawyer how to dig footers.”

 
    Chapter Seventeen
    A T THE NOON hour, Braedon ordered boxed lunches to be delivered from a local café. After everyone wolfed down their sandwiches, they headed out again on their assigned search routes. Work continued on the footers in the backyard, but even though the footers were being dug at a record pace, nothing of interest had turned up. No clues about why someone was so determined to stop the renovations, if that was even the case.
    Pierce rounded the house from checking on his brothers in the backyard and was about to head inside when Hamilton drove up. Pierce waited for the lieutenant to join him before going inside.
    â€œFinally got a few hours sleep?” Pierce asked.
    â€œHad to,” Hamilton said. “It’s hard to keep the respect of your troops when they wake you up in a puddle of drool on the coffee table.”
    Pierce slapped him on the back. “Tessa just got here. She said she has some news.”
    â€œAny news has got to be better than the big zero we have right now.”
    Pierce wasn’t so sure he agreed. Tessa had flatly refused to give him any information on the phone, and she hadn’t sounded enthusiastic about what she’d found. Instead, she’d sounded downright grim.
    Tessa glanced up from her seat on the couch when they came inside. “You’re not going to like this.”
    â€œI didn’t think you’d come here to deliver good news.” Pierce sat down on the other couch. Hamilton took one of the chairs.
    Tessa set a file on the coffee table. “We can go over this in more detail later. I’ll just give you the highlights. As far as the motel is concerned, the woman in those photographs is definitely not under any duress. I see no signs of coercion, and I interviewed three witnesses that saw her and the man she was with entering the motel room. All three were positive, without exception, that the two were an amorous couple.”
    Pierce scrubbed his face. “And you believe the woman was Madison.”
    Tessa nodded. “I believe the facts. None of the facts support the conclusion that it’s not her.”
    â€œWe’ll come back to that later. What else do you have?”
    She flipped the folder open and spread out a stack of faxes and printouts. “This is the dossier Casey—” she stopped, glancing up at Hamilton, as if