“Likely.”
“Well, then, what’s up high?” Gabriel asks.
“While you look around, I’m going to ask someone to search the cameras on all of the vehicles that responded here first,” I say.
“Got it.”
I talk to a few officers to get an idea of who was initially here when we had first responded to the call. And then I reach out to the department so I can have someone looking through the video data from the vehicles.
When I make it back to the living room, Gabriel is standing on a step stool and pulling a vent apart that’s up toward the ceiling.
“Find something?”
“I don’t know. When I shine my flashlight, I don’t see anything, but the vent cover looks like it’s broken. Maybe it’s an old unit?” He shines the flashlight around and looks at it for a moment before waving me up. He climbs down to give me space,so I step up and see that the vent is empty, but it looks like something was dragged out of it.
“Well… something was kept up here,” I say.
“Was it enough to kill someone over or was it connected in some other way?” Gabriel mutters.
“I don’t know. I’ll be curious to find out.”
My phone rings and I see that it’s Matthew.
“Oh, you chose to call me? How lovely,” I say as I answer it.
“Gabriel wasn’t answering,” he grumbles. “Trust me, I definitely tried tonotcall you. So you were… I mean… the recordings… showed someone leaving the scene.”
“Excuse me, wind back. You were going to say, ‘You were right,’ weren’t you? How cute. Say it again.”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s ‘Fuck off, Your Majesty’ to you. Don’t forget you owe me your life after I saved it,” I say.
Matthew sighs. “My Lord, Liam the Compassionate, you were so right. There is a person leaving the scene. If I’m seeing things right, it appears like they made their escape when you arrested the woman; the attention of all officers shifted to the other building and a person rushes from the scene.”
“Interesting. Thank you, peasant. Can you send it to me?”
“Grudgingly,” he says before hanging up without a goodbye.
“I really think if you were nicer to Matthew, he’d be your friend,” Gabriel comments, which makes me laugh.
“You are delightfully funny,” I say. “I need no one but you.”
He gives me a look, which is rather unkind of him. “You can have friends.”
“Sounds dreadful.”
My work phone shows that I have a video from Matthew, so Gabriel and I scoot together to watch it. It’s not the best angle, since it’s from one of the cruisers, but it shows those who were in the area heading toward the house where we’d pinned Abbydown. And once all attention is off the far side of the house, a single person clothed in black pushes away from the house and darts out of view.
“So they were here when we were,” Gabriel says.
“Sure were,” I agree. “I thought the police secured the area. What the fuck were they doing?”
“I thought so too,” Gabriel says as we head out and over to the area the person had come from. The video almost made them look like they were hiding in the bushes, but when I shine my flashlight, it seems like a horrible area to hide. No, I didn’t walk this way, but with officers surrounding the area… there’s no way they wouldn’t have been noticed. Had they somehow blended in with the crowd? Had they been somewhere safer and moved from there?
“I’m not writing off the fact that Abby was likely drawing attention off this person, but I’m sure not mentioning it. Hopefully, they send her on her way and won’t continue to hold her,” I say as I sweep my flashlight across the yard, unsure what I’m missing.
“It’s possible.”
