Clay glared at his brother.
Right now all he cared about was finding her. She wasn’t safe. He felt it. Heknewit.
He wanted to rush but couldn’t. It’d be better if he looked at all angles and lined up what it could be rather than guessing, making mistakes, and wasting time.
His fist slammed on the table while he tried to think.
His brother was talking to Fredrick, asking him questions, and glanced over at him quickly. He heard the frantic voice of Meredith’s ex saying he’d never put a camera anywhere and he was sick of being accused of things.
Clay went back to the last twenty-four hours of footage on the camera he’d installed and panned out to see if he could see any cars coming or going.
Maybe she went outside for a walk and someone took her? She’d said she used to walk the grounds to get air, but hadn’trecently. And why not take her phone and leave her purse, not the opposite?
“Nothing?” he asked.
“No. He says it’s not him. He wouldn’t even know how to do it.” Ford moved to the back door. “This is locked. The front door was too?”
“Yeah.”
“All signs are showing she left on her own,” Ford said. “Locking the doors. Could she have walked to a store or something?”
“Why would she do that?” he asked. “The closest is a mile away.”
“What about visiting anyone here? Or a friend picking her up? A parent?”
“She’d go out the front door,” he argued.
“Not if she didn’t want you to see her leaving,” Ford said. “She knows the camera is still there. She could have left from the back, locked it, and not realized she didn’t have her phone with her.”
Which made sense. She was upset with him and wanted space. He could be overreacting, but his gut said he wasn’t.
“I should check with her mother. Cassidy called me this morning. That is one of Meredith’s closest friends. She’s mentioned no one else other than Gale.”
“If she was with Gale you’d know,” Ford said. “But I’ll check now.”
While Ford was talking to Gale, his brother was looking around the kitchen and Clay was checking footage.
A little after one in the morning a car was pulling away from the building. He zoomed in more and noticed it was the neighbor. Where the hell was the guy going in the middle of the night? It looked as if he was alone in the car, but it was hard to tell in the dark.
He fast-forwarded the footage and noticed Karl didn’t return for almost ninety minutes. That’s a long time to go out in the middle of the night for a guy who worked from home and went into his office today.
“Check into the neighbor for me,” Clay said. He was pissed he never followed up with this before.
“There are two empty Starbucks cups in the trash,” Ford said, pulling them out.
“The guy left in the middle of the night and was gone for ninety minutes. He visits all the time and always comes to the back door,” Clay said.
“Meredith has never felt threatened by him, has she?” Ford asked. “He’s been helpful every time we’ve been here and talked to him.”
“He’s helpful because he’s always watching. It doesn’t take much to move from nosiness into obsession. Do it now,” he said. “The guy always felt off to me, but I let Meredith tell me he was just lonely.”
Ford was on the phone with his office giving the information while Clay searched his own on the guy.
He wanted to go break into the house and look around while Karl was gone, but no way Ford would allow it. Could he knock his brother out to do it? Sure. But he wouldn’t.
He’d rather think he was overreacting and Meredith had just left out the back on her own, gone with a friend and was staying out of sight while she processed the past few days.
But his heart told him she wouldn’t be that irresponsible. At least not to her students.
