Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
This felt bad.
Lachlan didn’t want Maddy to worry more than she already was, but the pieces weren’t adding up. Or rather, they were adding up to something he didn’t like.
“The door was unlocked when you tried the key?” Rafe asked him, aiming the beam of his flashlight around the locking mechanism and doorframe of the front door of Willow’s cottage.
“I covered my hand with my sleeve when I opened the door,” he said, standing behind Rafe with Blaine on the front porch. Maddy was safe at Mae’s.
“No visible signs of forced entry.” Rafe walked in, looked at the keypad. “Maddy’s sure it was armed when she left?”
“Positive.” He trusted her.
“There’s no way she would have left it disarmed,” Blaine said. “She’s meticulous about that sort of thing.”
“She said the suspect came across the lawn at the east side of the house?”
“That’s what she thought,” Lachlan said.
“With the amount of rain we’ve had recently, the ground’s pretty wet. Might be able to find some footprints outside.”
He and Blaine followed Rafe deeper into the house. Everything was clean and tidy. Nothing broken or out of place. Even Maddy’s bed was made with military precision and her computer and files were neatly stacked on the heavy desk in the kitchen.
Rafe checked all the windows, then went through the kitchen to look at the sliding doors that led to the back porch.
“Everything’s intact. No damage that I can see.
I’ll do a perimeter check, see if they left any footprints around the fence and along the east side of the house.
Blaine, see if you can get hold of Willow and ask her to send you the security camera footage for the past two hours. ”
“Sure.” He made the call while Lachlan went outside to check on Maddy’s car. Everything looked fine.
Blaine was just finishing up when he came back inside. “She’s sending it now. Anything with the car?”
“No.” He folded his arms, impatient for the footage to come through so they could see what they—who—they were dealing with. “What do you think?”
“Whoever it was definitely knew what they were doing. Even if I called forensics up here to dust for prints, I doubt they’d find anything.”
Yeah. That’s what worried him. “You think they targeted the place because it’s been empty?”
“Maybe. But they had all kinds of time to grab whatever they wanted and get away without being caught. I’d say they were looking for something specific and didn’t find it. Or someone.”
Bingo.
Rafe stepped away to take a call. Blaine tucked his phone away and came to stand with Lachlan. “Willow’s getting the footage now.”
“Good. Any reason you can think of why someone might want to come after Maddy?”
Blaine shook his head, his expression impossible to read. “Here? None.”
“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.”