“We are not going to the handball courts.”

Shawn glanced around the office. “I guess we could do it here, but it’s going to be dangerous with all this broken glass lying around.”

“We are not going to the handball courts because we have a case,” Gus said. “It might be the biggest, most exciting case we’ve ever had.”

That got Shawn’s attention. He stopped bouncing the ball. “The biggest?”

“It might be,” Gus said.

“Got it,” Shawn said. “Who died?”

“No one, if we can get there fast enough.”

“Get where?”

The phone rang once. Then Gus’ cell started ringing as the call forwarding kicked in. “There.”

Shawn snatched the cell out of Gus’ hand and hit the SPEAKER button. “Psych Investigations,” he said.

“Help, he’s killing me,” the rasp whispered harshly. But not quite as harshly, or as whispery, as it had before. There was a hint of tone, a smidgen of voice-not a lot, but enough for Gus to realize he knew the speaker from somewhere.

Shawn stared at the phone. And then spoke one syllable that chilled Gus to his liver.

“Dad?”

Chapter Three

The drive from the Psych offices usually took fifteen minutes, twice that at rush hour. But Gus kept his foot jammed down on the gas, blasting through stop signs and red lights, screaming around traffic, and violating every precept of the state vehicle code that didn’t involve the transportation of livestock. In the passenger seat, Shawn desperately dialed and redialed his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice mail.

As he hurtled past a bus full of nuns on their way to a local convent, Gus cursed himself. How could he have failed to recognize Henry Spencer’s voice? He’d heard it almost every day of his life since he was in single digits. He knew it as well as his own voice-better, actually, since he always covered his ears and hummed loudly whenever he was forced to listen to a recording of himself.