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“Whoa, wait a minute,” I interrupted, turning to face Duke. “What do you mean?”
“I broke into Michael’s house,” Fox said with a grin. He was bouncing in the back seat like a kid on Christmas morning.
“You did what?”
“Hey, you would have done the same thing if you were stuck in the back seat. I can’t believe you guys left me.”
“Yeah, but I know how to hack the cameras.”
Fox scoffed at her. “And you don’t think I’ve picked up a thing or two from you? I watch and I listen,” he said, moving his finger from his eyes to his ear.
I stared at him for a moment, then turned to Duke. “Seriously, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking we need to see inside that house. You heard Mrs. Kranski. Carolyn was practically a prisoner there.”
“That’s not what I heard,” I argued. “Maybe she wasn’t happy, but at no time did that lady give me the impression that Carolyn wasn’t free to leave.”
“She’s dead,” Duke said bluntly. “How much more proof do you need?”
“I’m not saying I disagree with you, but Michael is not someone we want to cross.” I calmed down, then put the car in drive. “Look, I don’t have a problem with looking around, but we need to be careful. Theo is missing and if we tip Michael off, it could put him in danger.”
“Party pooper,” Fox mumbled. “Don’t you at least want to hear what I found?”
I did, and frankly, I would have broken in later when neither of them were with me, but I wanted to make sure all our bases were covered. I wouldn’t normally be so cautious, but if anything happened to Theo, I knew Duke would never forgive himself, so I had to tread carefully until we had more information.
“Fine, what did you get?” I asked, pulling away from the curb. We couldn’t hang around out here. It would look suspicious.
“Where to start?” Fox scoffed. “First of all, this guy is no fun. There were no tasty treats in his house. Not even a Snickers bar. So you know there were no Funyuns—”
“Fox, I meant useful information,” I snapped.
“That is useful. It tells us a lot about who he is. Like, if I’m interrogating him, sticking a candy bar under his nose probably won’t work. Then again, if he’s been denying himself for a long time, it might be just what we need to break him.”
“Fox!”
“Fine,” he groaned. “Geez, a guy can’t even do his own investigating without a woman stepping in because she thinks she knows better.”
“Did you see anything about Carolyn in there?” Duke asked.
Fox shook his head. “It’s like he completely erased her from his life. The kid too. I don’t get how this guy had a woman and kid in his house for all those years and then just erased them. Which made me think that maybe he needed to have no association with them anymore.”
“Or didn’t want to be associated,” I added.
“Exactly. So, I took a look on his computer, and guess what I found hidden in the dark depths of his hard drive?”
“What?” I asked, not wanting to play his guessing game.
“There was a picture of what looked like Carolyn’s kid, only his profile was blurred.”
“Like he didn’t want anyone to know who he was?” I asked.
“Exactly. It was just enough to guess his age and what he looked like, but no distinguishing features. I compared it to the picture from the file, and I’m almost positive it was him. The picture was attached to a message. I sent it over to you,” he said to me.
“What did the message say?” Duke asked.
“Like this?” He shook his head. “That’s all it said. Vague as hell. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to get out of that.”
“Did you get a name of who the recipient was?”
