“Wait. I thought you only installed the one?”
Miles didn’t answer, and motioned to the screen.
The would-be maintenance man strode between the back of the sofa and the island, his head tucked to avoid this camera as well. He rounded the end of the island, and entered the hall that led to Raven’s master suite. Once the man was out of sight, the view through the lens was obscured as the first had been.
“He could have hugged the cabinets along the stove,” Miles explained, “and gotten close enough to cover and then uncover it without his face being caught on film.” His voice turned grim as he clicked to the next camera. “And now the bedroom.”
The man entered, reached up to tug as his cap, pulling it so low that his hair stuck up in the back, and he would have needed to look straight down at his feet to keep from running into anything. The camera, it turned out, was secured to a picture frame on the nightstand – a framed photo of Raven and Cassandra together in front of Harrod’s in London, cheeks pressed together, arms loaded down with shopping bags – and the man walked right up and covered it, too.
The skin on the back of Toly’s neck crawled like disturbed ants – for two reasons. One, because some stranger had been inside Raven’s apartment, her home, the very room where she lay her head on the pillow and drifted off to sleep, totally vulnerable. Two, because he’d been in her room with her two nights in a row,in front of a camerahe hadn’t known was there.
“That’s all there is,” Miles said. “He leaves the same way he came, uncovers the cameras as he goes, and never shows his face.”
Toly swallowed with difficulty. “You put a camera in her bedroom?”
Miles stilled, hand hovering over the laptop’s touchpad. “Um.” He fidgeted, and his gaze slid over slowly, face pale and caught-out like a kid’s. “I’m the only one with access to the footage. It’s not like I’m creeping on my sister while she gets dressed. Or…does other things…”
Toly sent him a frosty look. With effort, his back teeth and his throat vibrating with nerves, but Miles shrank down into his cut collar, unaware of any inner turmoil.
“Look, man, I wasn’t – Iswear– the cameras are motion-activated, and it pings the app. I wasn’t trying to – I mean, I panicked a little at first, when I saw someone was in the room with her, but I recognized you, and when I realized what was happening – or, um, what wasaboutto happen–”
“Stop talking.”
“I turned it off! I didn’t see anything, I swear!” He held up both empty palms in supplication. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and he winced. “I mean, I saw the start of–”
“Who else knows?” Toly snapped.
“Nobody! No one.” The panic in his face told Toly that was true. “Phil, or King, or Charlie might give you some hassle if they find out, yeah, but I’m not that kind of brother. Raven’s the scariest woman I know. She can do what she wants.” Under his breath: “Who she wants.”
Toly did the thing with his eyebrows that flattened people back against walls; it pushed Miles up against the arm of the sofa, which was a good thing for the state of Toly’s pride, but not a good omen should Miles be needed as backup in a firefight.
Pulse beating hard on the back of his tongue, flooding his mouth with the metallic tase of panic, Toly faced the paused computer screen and massaged at the headache that had sprouted between his eyes. Tried to regroup and focus on the threat at hand. “There was a name on his jumpsuit.”
Miles let out a shaky breath. His voice sounded relieved. “Yeah, there was. I was able to zoom in a little. It said ‘Mike.’ I checked with the super straight off, and he said that they do have a Mike who works maintenance on the weekends, but he wasn’t in today and there wasn’t anything scheduled for this flat besides. I got outta there fast, because he started looking at me like ‘who are you and why are you in the building,’ but, safe to say Mike the Maintenance Man wasn’t the one in here covering up cameras.”
Toly had figured as much. He nodded. “What was he here for, then? Setting up his own camera?”
“No. I swept for cameras and bugs and didn’t find anything. But…well, come see.”
There was something stomach-souring about crossing the threshold of the bedroom in which he’d spent most of the night alongside the brother of the woman he’d spent most of the night with. For a moment, breathing in the scent of her perfume, he imagined he could also smell their sweat, and sex; expected to turn his head and find her pleasure-drunk reflection staring out of the mirror at him, skin rosy with arousal, hands white-knuckled on the edge of the dresser.
But, no. The place was as tidy and perfect as she’d left it that morning, a little cool because she’d spun down the thermostat. The bed was neatly made, cream coverlets and pillow shams tucked in and lined up.
“In the bathroom,” Miles said, and led the way.
It, too, was company-ready: mirror and shower glass wiped to a shine, counters clear, orchid basking happily on the window ledge, gray winter light passing through its delicate white petals and highlighting the threads of veins running through each.
Miles opened the shower door and stepped inside, boots and all. Toly thought Raven would have bitched him out for that. He produced a small flashlight and crouched down; flashed the light over the chrome drain. “This isn’t in all the way,” he said, and thumbed an edge. “And it’s nicked. Someone pried up the trap, and emptied it.”
Immediately, Toly knew what that meant. But dread compelled him to say, “That could have happened any time.”
Miles sent him acome onlook and shook his head. “It’scleanclean. Not one hair in it. It happened today, after Raven showered this morning.” He waited a beat, gaze lingering on Toly in an assessing way. “Did you take a shower this morning, too? Before you left?”
“No. But. Yesterday.”
Miles nodded, as if he’d expected as much. His mouth set at a grim angle. “Which means our man has Raven’s hair…and some of yours, too, most likely. He’s got DNA.”
“What the fuck for?” Toly ground out through a throat rough with dryness.
