He opens an app, and the feed from the security cameras populates the screen.
“There’s more than one way to catch a perp.”
I climb onto the bed and peer over his shoulder at the images showing every angle of my property. One camera shows the driveway, another the front yard, and yet another picks up the front door. One camera is angled at the street and shows an SUV parked out front, its license plate clearly visible.
“Got him.” Ryan’s lips quirk up. “I may not be fast enough to go chasing him yet. But I’ve still got my smarts.”
He switches feeds, and this time the back garden and side areas come into view. A shadowy figure creeps next to the greenhouse.
“He’s going to smash it,” I hiss.
I can’t let that happen. It’ll cost hundreds of dollars to replace, and the plants inside will be ruined. I’ll be picking glass out of the ground for months, making it a no-go zone for Noah.
“We’ve got what we need,” Ryan says. “Let’s scare him off.”
I jump off the bed and switch on the light just as Ryan shouts, “Get out of here!”
The figure on the screen startles and runs off down the driveway. “Should I chase him?”
Ryan shakes his head. “We’ve got everything we need.”
A few moments later, a car engine starts, and the SUV squeals away. I pad down the hall to check on Noah again, but he’s still fast asleep.
When I come back, Ryan is concentrating on the laptop screen.
Climbing onto the bed, I kneel behind him. He leans against me, and the weight of his warm body calms my racing heat.
I peek over his shoulder at the screen, and he’s replaying the footage. We watch the SUV arrive on camera one. A person gets out of it and grabs a baseball bat from the front seat. It looks like they were serious about destroying the greenhouse.
They’ve got a hoodie over their head, but the way they walk, hunched over, looks like a man. So it’s not Rowena Evans.
We pick them up on camera two as they scurry up the driveway, swinging the bat in their hands. They glance up at the house, and Ryan pauses the camera. I lean in closer, but they’re too far from the camera to give a clear picture of their face.
Ryan brings up camera three, the one covering the front entrance. This angle is closer, and we watch the figure get out of the car again and come up the driveway. As they get closer, they glance at the house. When Ryan pauses the video, I gasp.
“You know this guy?”
It’s black and white and a little grainy, but there’s no doubt who it is.
“Unfortunately, yeah. Chad Huntington.”
28
RYAN
Marcus turns the pickup into the wide driveway of the Huntingtons’, and I peer out the window at the lush lawns and shaped shrubbery, wondering how much of it is Paige’s work.
“Thanks for this. I appreciate it.”
If Marcus was surprised to get my call in the middle of the night, he didn’t show it. Tracing the license plate confirmed that this Chad asshole is the guy. Marcus also traced the IP address of the online trolls back to him.
He’s just an amateur asshole who needs to be stopped before he does some real damage.
“No worries. Anytime, I mean it.” And I believe him. I’m starting to like this community, where people look out for each other. It seems like a nice place to be.
We park outside the three-story brick house in front of a wide concrete stairway with Corinthian pillars that leads to the front door.
“You want me to come in with you?”
