Page 119
“I think he knows her routine.”
The possibility changes what I’m looking for.
Emma usually leaves through the same lobby and finishes around the same time unless a meeting keeps her upstairs. When her schedule allows it, she takes lunch within a predictable window and walks to the same coffee place often enough that the staff know her order.
I’ve spent enough years in protection work to recognize how quickly ordinary habits become a routine somebody can track.
I reach for the controls. “Go back a week.”
The operator searches through the archive while I pull the exterior camera logs onto a second monitor. Employees cross the plaza, delivery trucks pull against the curb, and clients come and go through the revolving doors as yesterday gives way to the previous week.
Theo steps closer to the screens. “You’re looking for Spencer?”
“Spencer, the same vehicle showing up more than once, anybody spending too much time around the building without coming inside.”
His gaze shifts back to the footage. “You think he’s been watching her.”
“I think yesterday was too clean.”
Spencer knew where to stand and approximately when Emma would appear. He’d already arranged the photographers and brought the flowers before she ever came through the doors, and he positioned himself where she couldn’t reach the street without passing close enough for the cameras to capture both of them.
I lean toward the monitor as the operator moves through another afternoon.
“Check the plaza cameras for the last month,” I tell him. “Start with the hour before Emma usually arrives and the hour before she leaves. Flag anyone who appears repeatedly without a reason to be here.”
The operator nods and starts building the search.
Theo folds his arms. “If Spencer isn’t on the footage?”
“Then we look for somebody else.”
He studies me for a moment before understanding what I mean. “You think he could’ve had someone following her.”
“I want to know how he learned enough about her movements to be standing outside this building before she came down.”
Whether Spencer learned the routine himself or had somebody watching her for him matters less right now than establishing how long it’s been happening.
I pull up the garage cameras and add them to the search, checking the entrances Emma uses when she drives instead of taking a car from the company.
Theo moves around the desk and watches the footage beside me. “What exactly do you want security looking for?”
“Repeated faces, repeated vehicles, anybody hanging around the block long enough to notice when she arrives or leaves.” I switch to another exterior camera covering the opposite side of the plaza. “Have them check whether Spencer’s vehicle has been picked up anywhere around the building during the last month.”
“I’ll get them started.”
“And talk to reception. Quietly. I want to know whether anyone remembers seeing him around here before yesterday.”
Theo reaches for his coffee again. “You were making a list before you got here.”
His gaze has dropped to the legal pad beside my keyboard, where I’ve already written down the cameras I want checked along with the dates Spencer started contacting Emma again.
“I started it on the drive over.”
“I was hoping you’d tell me you got some sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when I know whether her ex has been sitting outside my building tracking her movements.”
Whatever humor Theo was about to use disappears before it reaches his face. He pulls out his phone instead. “I’ll get security on the street cameras.”