Brenda was right behind him. Cupping her face, she stared through those windows too. Still nothing. No furniture. No leftover household goods at all. With both sides of the duplex vacant, she would have expected a For Rent sign out front.
“The door is ajar.”
Brenda looked from him to the door. It was open just a crack. “If we go in…”
“Illegal entrance,” he finished for her.
“I’ll go in,” she said, moving toward the door. “I’m not in law enforcement and I have no real reason to know the rules.” Except she did. She used them in her stories all the time. She imagined that would work against her in a court of law.
“Funny,” he countered. “We’ll both go in. In my opinion, we were invited.”
Brenda chuckled. “I love the way you think.” She’d have to remember that line.
The back door entered into the kitchen. There was a musty, dank smell about the house as if it hadn’t been lived in for a very long time. Some of the cabinet doors hung from a single hinge. Others were missing altogether. A few soda and beer cans were lying around on the floor. A burger wrapper and pizza box on the counter. Thankfully nothing scary like needles or other drug paraphernalia. More beer cans stood in one corner of the living room. An old blanket was on the floor under a window.
“Brenda.”
She turned to him, and that was when she spotted the writing on the wall behind them—the one that separated the kitchen from the front room. The message looked exactly like the one left in black spray paint on her garage door.
YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
Fear spread through Brenda like frost creeping through her veins, freezing all that it touched. Then, as if her emotions had shifted into an unexpected reverse, outrage abruptly roared inside her.
How was she supposed to find something when she had no idea what she was looking for?
Chapter Eleven
Vacant Duplex
Bradley Street
Huntsville, 5:30 p.m.
Outside the house they sat in the car. The silence had thickened to the point Ben wanted to reach out to her. She hadn’t spoken since reading the message on the wall. Ben didn’t ask if she was okay. Of course she wasn’t. Every damned thing that happened only opened up more questions. There just didn’t appear to be any answers.
He had a feeling this was someone’s twisted idea of a game. He had his doubts about whether the cartel would play around this way. This felt more and more like someone who got burned or shortchanged by Devers and now that person wanted to find whatever was missing. Maybe before the cartel learned of the situation.
Ben turned to his passenger. “Let’s consider our timeline for a moment.”
She looked to him. Blinked. He couldn’t decide based on the deadpan expression on her face if she was scared, angry or numb. Maybe a little of all three.
“The intruder came into your home very early this morning. He left you that note on the garage door. Then, this afternoon, in our follow-up search, we find the address in the dollhouse.”
Another slow blink and vague nod.
“My question is, how difficult was it to remove the Barbie elevator and then to put it back?” Sounded completely ridiculous but he had a point.
She considered the question for a moment. “It doesn’t take long. Detaching it makes a couple of snapping noises, as does pushing it into place. But it was loose when I checked so it was even easier than usual. I may not have told you, but I believe Scott left the message there because he knew that was the sort of place I would look.”
He had expected as much. “So you don’t think the intruder left the message there and that maybe his gloves prevented him from popping the elevator back into place properly. You said he was wearing gloves, right?”
She nodded. “He was. For sure.”
She rubbed at her arms, and he wrestled with the need to reach out and touch her, give her hand a reassuring squeeze…something to underscore she wasn’t alone in this.
“Then it’s reasonable to assume,” he went on, pushing past the idea of touching her, “that the intruder who left the message in your garage could have left this message as well. The gloves and his haste left it loose, as you say. You never noticed it being loose before, did you?”
She thought about it for a moment, her expression shifting as if some realization had just dawned. “You’re right… If it had been loose before, Janey would have noticed and wanted me to fix it. So it had to be him—the intruder.” Shock flared in her eyes. “Oh. My. God.” Her head moved slowly from side to side. “That means the intruder had to be him. Son of a…”