Chapter 32
chapter
thirty-two
Caleb followed the sheriff back toward the house, his pulse already kicking up.
Whatever Sutherland had found, it was serious enough to pull him away from the kennels. Serious enough that the man’s expression had gone carefully blank—the look someone wore when bracing to share bad news.
They stepped inside through the back door, and Caleb spotted Naomi.
She stood in the office doorway, her arms crossed, her face tight with something that looked like dread. “In here.”
Caleb’s chest tightened as he moved past her into the office.
The laptop sat open on the desk, the screen glowing with a frozen image from their security camera feed. Naomi had pulled up the footage—grainy, black-and-white, time-stamped in the corner.
Sheriff Sutherland stepped beside him, gesturing toward the screen. “Your sister was showing me the security footage from last night. We found this.”
He clicked the mouse, and the video began to play.
The frame showed the back door, the porch light casting a dim circle of illumination. For a few seconds, nothing moved.
Then the door opened.
He watched as a figure stepped outside.
His heart raced as his worst fears seemed to be confirmed.
Someone in this house had sneaked outside . . . right before a man was murdered.
Even in the shadows of the video, Caleb could see the person who’d left was slender and dressed in a black hooded coat that obscured any features. The hood was pulled low, blocking the face. The figure moved carefully, deliberately, closing the door without a sound.
This person was a woman, he realized. It was clear by the narrow shoulders and graceful movements.
The woman began to walk.
Not toward the kennels. Not toward the driveway.
She walked toward the back of the property.
Toward the woods.
Toward where the dead body had been found.
She knew exactly where she was going.
Caleb’s heart pounded in his ears, a dull roar that drowned out everything else.
The timestamp read 3:07 a.m.
The sheriff’s voice cut through the fog in his mind. “We believe this was around the time of the victim’s death. Give or take thirty minutes.”
Caleb stared at the screen, his jaw tight as his mind raced.
“Can you identify her?” Sutherland asked.
Caleb leaned closer, studying the footage more closely. He watched the figure move across the frame, her gait smooth and unhurried.
But he couldn’t see her face.
The hood concealed too much. The angle was wrong. The lighting too poor.
Caleb rewound the footage and watched it again, frame by frame, searching for any detail that might give her away.
Height. Build. The way she moved.
Nothing definitive.
It could be anyone—Millie, Valentina.
Not Naomi. His sister wouldn’t do something like this.
Probably not Sissy.
He looked again.
Or maybe it could be. The coat wasn’t buttoned, so he couldn’t really see the stomach area.
But really all he had were guesses.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb finally said. “But I can’t tell who it is.”
The sheriff nodded, his expression unreadable. “She didn’t want to be identified. That much is clear.”
Caleb’s mind raced, pieces clicking together too fast, too sharp.
What about the alarm? If someone left, they should have been notified.
His gaze snapped to Naomi. “The alarm should have alerted us when that door opened.”
Naomi nodded, her face pale. “I know.”
“Did it?” he pressed.
She shook her head slowly. “No. I checked the logs. There’s no record of the alarm going off last night. At all.”
Caleb’s stomach dropped. “Which means someone turned it off. Someone who knew the code.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and undeniable.
Caleb straightened, his chest tight, his thoughts spiraling.
Only a handful of people had access to that code. Him. Naomi. Max. His mom.
And the guests.
Millie. Valentina. Sissy.
His mind immediately went to Millie’s words from earlier, the suspicion she’d voiced so carefully. She seems familiar.
Valentina.
She’d arrived at an odd time, with a story that checked out on paper but felt thin in practice. She’d been polite. Cooperative. Exactly what someone would be if they wanted to blend in.
But what if she wasn’t here for safety?
What if she was here for something else entirely?
Caleb’s jaw tightened, the implications settling over him like ice.
If Valentina had turned off the alarm, if she’d slipped outside in the middle of the night and walked toward the woods where a man now lay dead—
He stopped himself, forcing his thoughts to slow.
He didn’t know. Not for certain.
But the woman in that footage had known what she was doing. She’d disabled the alarm. She’d moved with purpose.
And someone had ended up dead.
Why had the man even been back there? What had he been doing?
Had someone in this house known he would be there? Had this person sneaked outside to meet this man, and their rendezvous turned deadly?
He had so many questions.
Caleb looked back at the screen. Sutherland had frozen the image of the woman there.
He stared at the shadowed figure disappearing into the dark.
Whoever she was, she’d been careful.
He had to tell the sheriff about his suspicions, whether he liked it or not.