Page 54 of Shallow Remains

“What do you mean, here?” Was something going on elsewhere?

Blaine faced him. “You know what she did overseas?”

“I know she was an IT contractor, and that she worked with you.”

He gave a nod. “Not just with me, but primarily, yes. I’m guessing she hasn’t told you anything else.”

He was really sick of the cryptic bullshit. “No. But Xanthe told me this morning that she’d been through something traumatic over there.”

Blaine’s jaw tightened. “She did, yeah.”

Before Lachlan could demand more detail, Blaine’s phone dinged with a series of incoming messages.

“Willow sent the video links.”

Lachlan waved at Rafe, who ended his call and came over to review the footage with them.

“I installed the cameras,” Blaine said as he toggled through the various feeds, all showing a different view. “Here.”

One camera caught a single suspect melting out of the trees to the east of the property line. Dressed all in black. Face and head covered. Baggy clothes. Gloves. Average height. Slender-looking but impossible to tell for sure.

Whoever it was paused at the far end of the front porch, sat on it and slipped on a pair of shoe covers with their back to the camera before disappearing from view.

“They definitely did their homework,” Blaine muttered. “They hugged the wall to avoid the other cameras.”

All they could see after that was two arms stretching out with something in a gloved hand.

“Lockpick kit,” Rafe said.

The suspect made short work of the lock, then quickly slipped inside and shut the door. Blaine switched to an interior camera, but the intruder kept their back to it and used another device to disarm the security system.

“Jesus,” Lachlan muttered. “Who around here would have that kind of tech?”

“No one, except maybe Earl, and there’s no way that’s him,” Blaine said.

“There’s also no way he would ever be involved with something like this,” Rafe added.

Lachlan nodded in agreement, staring at the dark-clad intruder on screen. Who the hell was it?

The hair on the back of his neck rose when the interior camera showed the figure moving purposely from room to room. Not touching anything. Just looking.

Searching.

He had a really bad feeling they were searching for Maddy.

The person paused briefly at the desk in the kitchen. Took a minute to peruse the papers sitting on it. Their hand dipped into their jacket pocket. Withdrew and hovered over the desk for a moment. Lachlan didn’t see anything there.

Then the intruder left the way they’d come in. The east-facing camera caught only a flicker of them hopping the porch railing and melting into the trees.

Without a word, Blaine strode for the kitchen. He stopped in front of the desk.

“Find something?”

Blaine used a piece of paper to pick something up and carried it back to them, his face grave. “They didn’t break in to steal something. They broke in to leave this.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Lachlan opened the paper, revealing a circular piece of fabric tucked into the fold.