The job they were out on wrapped up much quicker than expected and finding his afternoon free, Noah decided to check the footage on the cameras he had set up at Olivia’s house.
He hadn’t missed the ‘told you so’ look Daniella had given him when Olivia had stormed out that morning, and wasn’t in the mood to be lectured.
‘So that went well then,’ she had announced, stepping into the hallway as he slammed the front door and pushed his dripping hair back off his face.
‘It would have done if you had shown up when you were supposed to.’
‘Hey, don’t blame me. This mess is all of your own making. It was inevitable we were going to meet eventually.’
He hadn’t liked that, partly because she had warned him this would happen and also because he knew she was right. She had followed him into the kitchen, where he picked up his now cold coffee, took a sip, grimaced, then threw the rest down the sink.
‘Adam Somerville left another message on my phone. He’s still trying to get hold of you. You need to call him back. You can’t just keep ignoring him.’
‘I spoke with him this morning and reminded him that the job is off.’ He glanced at Daniella as he sluiced his mug under the hot water tap, gave her a challenging look when she arched one eyebrow. ‘I’ve been more than fair with him and he wasn’t billed, so he needs to get over it. The job’s a dead end.’
‘Is it really though? I would say that, given recent events, Adam has every cause to be concerned.’
Noah set the mug on the drainer, turned to face her. ‘Look, I made the call and I stand by it. Adam Somerville is no longer our client. If you have a problem with that, then you’d better give me a good reason why.’
Daniella’s eyes flamed, anger flushing her cheeks, reminding him of why very few men dared cross her. ‘You know exactly why. You’ve taken your eye off the ball, Noah. You and I, we make a pretty good team, and we always get the job done. But this last couple of months, since you got wrapped up with Olivia, you’ve been thinking with your dick, and it’s affecting our business.’
‘Leave Olivia out of this.’
‘This isn’t about Olivia. This is about you and this job. I need you thinking up here.’ She tapped her forehead to make the point.
‘My focus is fine.’
‘Is it really?’ She picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it as she fixed him with another one of those challenging glares.
Noah reined in his temper, knew if he said anything else it would lead to a bigger fight. ‘I need to go get dressed or we’ll be late,’ he eventually said, ignoring her question. He had pushed past her, skulking upstairs for a shower, the bad mood he was in sticking like glue all morning.
They didn’t speak again about the fight. He had worked with Daniella Curry for three years, going into partnership after they left the police force around the same time, and, while they were both hot-headed and quick to temper, they made a good team. They were also professional enough that any words spoken in the heat of the moment were quickly brushed aside when they were on a job.
Her accusation stuck though. Truth was, he hadn’t wanted Olivia and Daniella to cross paths and, yes, it might have been inevitable, but he had pushed that problem to the back of his mind as something to deal with later. Now he had to figure out a way to handle this.
Olivia had given him her phone to view the cameras, but hadn’t realised that he had only gone through the pretence of transferring the footage to his Mac. He already had full access to the cameras and had done ever since he had first installed them. He suspected she would have a hissy fit if she found out. If someone was harassing her though, he intended to find out who the hell it was.
He fixed a sandwich and poured a coffee, then he took them through to his office, sat down at his Mac and opened the program. While he waited for it to load, he glanced at his phone, noted Olivia still hadn’t replied to the message he had sent her late morning, which suggested she was still mad at him, and he couldn’t really blame her. He would leave her to simmer down for a bit.
She had trusted him last night, opened up to him, and then slept with him, only to find out he had lied to her. Not lied, he corrected. Just hadn’t told her.
The scars had been a revelation and he had a lot of questions about those. Last night hadn’t been the time to talk; he had been too distracted. Olivia finally had her clothes off and he wasn’t going to risk her putting them back on. When he had told her the scars didn’t bother him, he had been telling the truth. She was beautiful with or without them, and he wanted to punch the arsehole who had knocked her confidence.
He wondered if she had considered the connection between Gary’s death and her own accident. She had been lured to the house in Honington Lane to watch a man burn and was now being taunted by the killer. It all seemed too coincidental and had to be linked to what had happened to her when she was a teenager, but why, if it had just been an accident, and where the hell did Gary Lamb fit into this?
For now, he turned his attention to the cameras on the screen, replayed the motion detected footage from the front camera first, wanting to be certain he hadn’t missed anything, then forwarding through the actual camera footage from about 4pm the previous day. As he ate his sandwich, he watched Molly leave again, Olivia arrive home. A guy walked past with a dog and a couple of cars, plus a delivery van drove down the road. There was nothing suspicious, no one approaching the property. Switching to the back camera, he repeated the process.
Olivia said the door had been open. While he didn’t doubt her, her emotions were running high, the events of the past week having taken its toll, and he couldn’t discount the possibility that Molly hadn’t just left the door unlocked, that maybe it hadn’t closed properly. There had been a breeze last night, along with the unrelenting rain, so it could have possibly blown open. As for the song, could it have just been a blip with her Echo?
Busy musing different explanations, he almost missed the flicker on the screen.
Rewinding, he watched again. Was that something, someone moving in the garden to the side of the house? He paused the footage, rewound again, zooming in and slowing down the video feed.
A dark shadow approaching the house, only part of the figure visible. Jean-clad legs, dark jacket, just one sleeve visible, head down and face obscured by a mask or hood. The figure didn’t approach the back door though. It disappeared to the side of the house where the gate led to the driveway.
Noah checked the time stamp and flicked back to the front camera, forwarding the footage to the same point. If the figure went through the gate, the front camera would pick them up.
He watched the footage three times, slowing down and zooming in again, just to be sure.
Whoever had been in the garden had not left via the back gate.
They hadn’t approached the back door either. So where in the hell had they disappeared to?
He returned to the back camera, took some screenshots and spent some time blowing them up further and adjusting the picture quality. There was no way of identifying the intruder. Even the clothing was dark and nondescript.
There was no sign of entry to the house, but the timing was too much of a coincidence, and he now fully believed Olivia’s version of what had happened. Whoever had sent her the notes appeared to be upping the stakes, breaking into her house and taunting her with mind games. Given that her tormentor had chained a man to a chair and set him on fire, Noah didn’t like that idea one bit.
