Chapter 17
Stepping into the darkness dressed in his night fatigues was like coming home to Ethan.
He smiled, readiness zinging in his veins as Rhys switched off the engine and all sound faded away.
He’d found a gate into Aunt Maggie’s farm property earlier in the day and they parked both vehicles inside near the neighbouring bush where they wouldn’t be spotted by anyone who might drive by.
They checked the comms as they moved back to the garden. He hadn’t asked Dobby where he’d got the equipment from, but it was top quality.
Before they reached the lake trail, they separated; Rhys, Noah and Dobby heading right to come at the garden from the eastern side, and he and Heath coming from the south.
Maybe he was being paranoid expecting the garden to be hit again tonight. The fire had done significant damage, but it still hadn’t stopped Chelsea from going ahead with her plans to renovate and Ethan suspected that would be enough to irritate Johann.
And now they had both Darren and Leyton as potential suspects.
He kept scanning the area, moving quietly, listening for anything out of place, or any sounds of a motor vehicle. They were far enough from the main highway that any cars were a faint rumble.
The wire fence marking the start of the garden came into view and Ethan let Heath climb through first before following. It felt strange not to have a rifle in his hand, but he had a knife at his belt.
Heath split off, heading for a spot close to the gate where he could monitor both the road and the back of the garden.
Ethan continued to a tree between the cottages and the main house. Connor would monitor the security cameras Heath had set up and would notify them if they caught any movement.
He climbed up onto the lowest branch of the liquidambar, his pelvis twinging as he did so. Taking a second to shift, he climbed to the next branch. From here he could see the house, kitchen garden, cottages and over the hedge into the public garden.
He settled in to wait.
***
Chelsea found she didn’t like waiting, so the distraction of cooking Aunt Maggie’s favourite biscuits was welcome. Connor had set a laptop on the table monitoring the security camera feed while she and Mila cooked up a storm.
By ten o’clock, they’d made almond bread, Father’s Favourites and melting moments, and were waiting for the banana bread to come out of the oven. The entire kitchen smelled like Chelsea remembered from her childhood; sweet and delicious.
A pang of loss swept over her.
Mila yawned. “When this one’s done, I’m going to bed.”
“There’s no reason for you to wait up,” Chelsea told her. “I can take it out. I’ll show you to your room.” She’d made up Aunt Maggie’s bed earlier in the evening when Dobby had gone through the plan.
“All right. Wake me if anything happens.”
Chelsea took her upstairs, made sure she had a fresh towel, and showed her where the bathroom was before returning to the kitchen.
“Any movement?” she asked Connor.
“A couple of cats and a possum.” Connor stretched.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Coffee would be great.”
She made herself a coffee too. She wouldn’t sleep knowing Ethan was out there waiting for someone to attack.
As she placed their mugs on the table, the timer rang and she removed the banana bread from the oven and left it on the sink to cool.
Then she set up Aunt Maggie’s ancient laptop on the table.
“Are you going to work all night?” Connor asked.
“Maybe.”
“Ethan and the guys know what they’re doing.”
She nodded. “I know. Have you worked with them much?”
“On occasion.”
“And you’re a dog handler?”
“That’s my primary role.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Beats working with people.” A frown crossed his face and then disappeared.
Chelsea smiled. “I understand.”
Connor gestured to her laptop. “What are you doing?”
“Going through Aunt Maggie’s laptop to make certain there’s nothing important on there. It might have useful information about the way she ran Lilydale Cottage.”
“So you’re staying here?”
She bit her lip. “Maybe. Possibly. I haven’t decided yet.”
“I get that. It’s difficult making decisions about your life when you were on one path and are suddenly thrown onto another.”
Had something happened to him? She hesitated.
It was a personal question to ask someone she barely knew.
Instead she nodded and logged in, bracing herself for the mass of folders spread across the desktop.
Aunt Maggie had always said she liked her folders where she could find them, but the lack of organisation was like an out of tune string on a guitar for Chelsea.
She scanned the titles: garden, house, bills, Chelsea.
With a frown, she clicked on the folder with her name. She leaned back in her chair as a folder full of screenshots of her work opened. She flicked through them, recognising clients she’d worked with in the past and the graphics she’d done for them.
Her chest squeezed. Aunt Maggie had kept them all. A sob broke out before she could stop it, and Connor glanced up.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded as tears blurred her vision.
“Chelsea, what’s wrong?” The gentle, but slightly panicked tone to his voice made her swallow hard.
She waved her hand at the computer and exhaled. “A folder. Me.”
Connor’s face showed his understanding, and he squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled drawing comfort from his touch. She exhaled again, dabbed at her eyes, and cleared her throat. “Aunt Maggie kept copies of all my work. I didn’t know she followed what I’d been doing.”
“It sounds like she was an incredible woman.”
“She was.” Chelsea drew back her hand so he could concentrate on his surveillance.
She closed the folder and clicked through the rest of the folders, one by one.
There were a few things which might be useful; invoices of where she got supplies, a list of people who had stayed in the cottages and some photos of the garden Chelsea could use in her promotion.
Finally she opened Aunt Maggie’s email account. As far as Chelsea knew, Aunt Maggie had used it for logging into websites when she shopped online and little else. They’d set up an auto-responder after the funeral to tell senders Aunt Maggie had died and to contact Sabine for anything.
The inbox was full of spam and junk mail, which Chelsea reviewed before unsubscribing from newsletters or deleting. There were a few enquiries about accommodation which Chelsea kept. She could contact them later and tell them Lilydale Cottage had reopened.
Finally when she was done, she went to click on the Trash folder to empty it, but she clicked the Sent folder instead. With a sigh, she was about to click the correct folder when a name jumped out at her.
Johann Mueller.
Chelsea’s heart raced as she clicked on the email. Aunt Maggie was refusing to sell Lilydale Cottage to him and, from the tone, she was annoyed.
Aunt Maggie was always polite.
Chelsea read the email from Johann, which was below it. He outlined all the positives and offered Aunt Maggie a unit of her own in the complex.
That wouldn’t have gone down well. Aunt Maggie was fiercely independent and liked her space. Living so close to someone in a unit would have driven her mad.
Chelsea kept scrolling through a long email trail which had started a couple of months before Aunt Maggie had died. Around the time Johann’s firm was working on the sports complex.
Give Johann his due. He was persistent.
But one thing bothered Chelsea. She glanced at Connor. “If you wanted to buy Lilydale, why would you wait for a year before approaching the new owners, particularly if you’d been in discussions with the previous owner?”
Connor didn’t look up from the screen. “Maybe circumstances changed, and you were focusing on a different project,” he suggested. “Or because you wanted to distance yourself from the negotiation.”
“There was no need to distance himself from the negotiation if he had done nothing wrong.”
Connor’s gaze flashed to hers. “How did Aunt Maggie die?”
“She fell off a ladder.” Horror filled Chelsea. She shook away the thought it might not have been an accident, unable to contemplate someone going to such desperate lengths to obtain a property.
But the vandalism and fire suggested perhaps Johann was.
Before she could suggest it, Connor straightened, his gaze sharp on the screen in front of him.
“Target at section two carrying a jerry can.”
Chelsea’s heart pounded as she pushed back her chair and raced around the table to watch his screen, her horror replaced by fear for Ethan. Connor pointed to one frame and a moment later a male figure wearing a dark hoodie passed by carrying a jerry can.
“Target at section three.”
The man was the same size and frame as Darren, but Chelsea couldn’t see his face. “Should I call the police?”
Connor shook his head. “We don’t want to scare him away. He has to do something more than trespass.”
“So we have to wait.”
Connor nodded. “We wait.”
***
At Connor’s call, Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. This would be over soon. At the second call, he dropped from the tree branch to the ground. Whoever it was, was headed this way.
Rhys and Noah would fall in behind the intruder, cutting off his escape route, and Ethan would follow when he passed.
The man had a jerry can.
Anger simmered in Ethan’s stomach. The garden’s destruction hadn’t been enough. If he was a betting man, he’d bet a structure would be the next target.
He hoped it wasn’t the house.
At the crunch of footsteps Ethan slowed his breathing, ready to act at a moment’s notice.
The man walked past, not even in a crouch, but brazenly as if he had every right to be there.
Though Ethan couldn’t see his face, he had the same build as Darren.
He waited until the man went down the path towards the barn before following.
He spotted Rhys’s tall frame in the shadows and Rhys gestured he’d go down the far side of the barn.
Ethan nodded and continued following the intruder.