Page 36 of Sick Little Devotion

“Why’re you not answering?” Carlos asks as he is making a joke, but his shaky tone gives him away. Something is wrong.

“What’s up?” I ask, slipping out of the bedroom and down the hallway.

“Uh, we have a bit of a problem.”

“With what? The warehouse?” I shut myself in my office. I’m not ready to share my business with Sara. She’ll learn when she’s ready.

“No, it’s the security footage at your house. You asked me to make sure that it was just Ellen—and she did open a window—but that’s not what set off the alarm.”

Dread washes over me. “What was it then?”

“Well, it’s hard to see. Almost seems like a fucking ghost, really. They came in from the back of the property somewhere, and then entered the courtyard through the back gate. The gate is what set off the alarm.”

“That gate is password controlled,” I say through gritted teeth, the dread now shifting to borderline panic. I don’t have enemies anymore—not in my realm of business. Sure, I have competitors, but I did my best not to cause any trouble. That was for others to be had.

“They busted the lock,” Carlos explains. “I don’t know how anyone missed it.”

They didn’t. Sara saw them But did they see her?

My heart thrums against my chest walls, rattling it.

“We need to figure out who it was. Did you get any kind of identity? Something?”

“No, the bastard came prepared for cameras. They knew what they were doing. Or maybe they were just really lucky. I’m not sure.”

“Why did they leave?”

“I don’t know. They stood there in the courtyard for a while, looking around. It’s a really fucking creepy video.”

“Then where did they go?”

“Back out to the woods. Disappeared into fucking thin air. It was as if they were never there from the get-go.”

“Go check the woods.”

“I’m not doing that alone.”

“Then we will go check the fucking woods. Nothing gets into this place and then leaves. That’s impossible.”

“Which is why I think it’s a problem,” Carlos says eerily. “I think we might have a real fucking big problem. I don’t think this guy is just some homeless dude looking for a place to sleep. I think he’s more than that.”

“You don’t know that,” I reason, running my fingers through my damp hair. “You can’t just jump to conclusions like that. Maybe he got in when the gate was open.”

“Right, okay, boss,” Carlos chuckles. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night, then we can stick to that story, but that’s not the one I’ll be telling myself.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.”

“Deal.”

I hang up the phone and shake my head. I don’t know how to feel about anything I’ve just fucking heard, but I do know one thing. I’ll find the motherfucker. I have something more precious than the whole earth in this house, and I’m not going to let anything happen to her.

Returning to the bedroom, I slip into a pair of jeans and black long-sleeved Henley.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to Sara as I step into the bathroom. She’s wrapped up in a gray fuzzy towel. “I have to help one of my employees for a few minutes. I shouldn’t be long. If you get hungry, the kitchen is stocked.”

She nods slowly, narrowing her eyes. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course.”