She hung up without waiting for a reply, her eyes already moving over the wreckage of the room, the gears in her head turning.
Victoria slid her phone back into her pocket and scanned the room again, forcing herself to look at it like a crime scene instead of an abandoned shack.
“Start with the main room,” she said, already moving toward the overturned table.
Isabel didn’t answer — just moved toward the cabinets near the small kitchenette. She crouched and tugged one open. “Empty,” she reported. “Unless you count a rusted can opener and a spoon.”
“Could be staged,” Victoria said. “They may have cleared everything knowing someone would come looking.”
“Or,” Isabel countered, pulling open the next door, “they just never kept much here to begin with. Makes it easier to leave in a hurry.”
Victoria glanced over. “That’s still staging.”
“That’s survival,” Isabel shot back.
Victoria didn’t bite. She shifted to the small bookshelf near the wall, scanning the spines of battered paperbacks. Her fingers lingered on one that looked newer than the rest. She slid it out — the pages had been hollowed in the center, but whatever had been hidden there was gone.
“Empty,” she called across the room.
Isabel straightened from the counter. “Maybe because someone else already found it.”
Victoria set the book on the table a little harder than necessary. “Or because they took it with them when they left.”
“Same difference,” Isabel muttered.
They moved through the rest of the space — two cramped bedrooms, each with a single bed and a heap of rumpled blankets. In the first, Isabel poked at the mattress with her knuckles. “Still warm.”
Victoria stepped in beside her. “Body heat doesn’t linger that long.”
“Tell that to this mattress.” Isabel gave her a look that was half challenge, half satisfaction.
Victoria moved past her without answering, checking the nightstand — nothing but a single cigarette butt and a matchbook from a gas station in town.
“Matches,” she said. “Could be our lead.”
Isabel arched a brow. “From a place ten minutes from the mill road? Not exactly narrowing it down.”
The second bedroom held even less — just a bedframe with no mattress and a tipped-over chair. Victoria crouched to checkunderneath and found nothing but dust and a small scuff mark on the floorboards.
When she came back into the main room, Isabel was at the window, scanning the tree line.
“They could’ve ditched anything important outside,” Isabel said. “No point searching in here if they’ve already cleared it.”
Victoria’s patience frayed another inch. “We don’t assume it’s clean until we’ve gone over every inch.”
“We just did,” Isabel said.
“Then we’ll check again,” Victoria replied.
Isabel let out a low, irritated sound.
Victoria straightened, brushing her hands off. “Fine. Let’s take it outside. You check the back. I’ll take the front and the woods.”
Isabel’s jaw shifted, but she nodded once. “Works for me.”
They both moved toward their respective doors — the sound of boots against old floorboards and the quiet creak of the building the only noise between them.
Victoria stepped out into the muted light of the clearing, the air cool and still under the thick canopy overhead. The dirt out front was torn up with tire tracks, their edges sharp and undisturbed by wind or rain — fresh enough to make her gut tighten.
