“She’s perfect for us. Isn’t she?” I don’t wait for his answer because I already know it’s true.
We opt for the stairs rather than the elevator and step out onto her floor. My heart constricts in my chest, the spotlights flickering on and off above us. Something doesn’t feel right as we cautiously approach her door, finding it ajar.
We go down hard as we cross the threshold into the dimly lit apartment.
“Fuck!” Caleb roars, earning a thump on the wall from the neighbours next door.
“Inside voices, Cal. We’re trying to stay under the radar, remember?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, brother. You see we’re on the floor, right? What the fuck is this?”
I slip and slide my way over to the wall and fumble around for the light switch. Flicking it on, all the air is sucked from my lungs. Blood coats our clothes and the floor, a thick crimson mass shocking against the white tile.Caleb gets to his feet and pulls out his phone, closing the front door with his shoulder.
“Don’t touch anything,” he orders. I use the edge of my shirt not soaked in blood, of which there’s very fucking little, to wipe down the light switch, but it feels redundant right now.
We look like we’ve had tummy time in an abattoir, and it’s less conspicuous than we were hoping for.
I go over to the shelves and right the camera, seeing that it has been pulled from the plant pot where I had it hidden.
“Ezra, I need you to go back through the footage in Ebony’s apartment; it seems I can’t access anything but the live feed.”
“What the fuck happened to you two?” Ezra’s voice booms through the speaker, his concern means he’s tapped into the app;
“We don’t know what’s going on; can you check the fucking footage?” Caleb growls as he heads off at a run down the hallway to check the girls’ rooms while I go in search of the kitchen to see if there is any sign of Ebony’s bag.
He comes back in, running his hand through his hair.
“Nothing. The beds are stripped, but nothing else seems out of place.”
Apart from the camera and the frame on the shelf, some groceries strewn across the side, and the pints of blood covering the floor, everything else seems to be exactly where it was this morning when we left. What remains of a long stem glass crunches under Caleb’s foot.
The video call connects, and Ezra’s face fills the screenas he hands his daughter to Cara and gets to work on his computer.
“I can see Ebony arrive home, then Megan a while later, and then you guys. The only other people getting off on that floor are students, and they appear to head straight to their own apartments.”
“Well, whoever the fuck it was didn’t chuck them out of the third-floor window,” Caleb snaps as he paces the rug, leaving his bloody footprints behind. At this point, we’re going to have to burn everything we’re wearing.
“Think outside the box. Would Ebony ever leave of her own free will?” Cara asks, leaning forward towards the mic to keep her voice low as she rocks the baby.
“No; never. She’d fight to the death.” I wince at my statement, knowing it’s true, glancing down at the spilt blood that looks far too much for the donor to still be walking around.
“Not the time for worry, sweet cheeks,” Cara chuckles, pulling me out of my panic spiral as Ezra grunts at her. “Calm down, my beast.” She kisses the corner of his mouth affectionately and runs her palm soothingly over their daughter’s back as she wriggles in her sleep. “All I’m saying is if she didn’t go willingly, he would have had to knock her out. I never went to university, but if it is anything like Doc’s home for the girls, there was always someone around. How did he get her out of there unseen?”
Caleb and I let the thought ruminate and seem to come to the same conclusion instantly.
“She never left,” we say in unison.
“If you were here, I would kiss you, Cara.”
Ezra growls as his darkened gaze finds mine through the screen—scowling in warning in that caveman way that won his wife’s heart in the first place.
I laugh because he’s not here to inflict bodily harm, and Cara chuckles along with me—running her fingers through his hair and tucking what has fallen loose behind his ear.
Possessively obsessed still, I see.
“I’ve just done a diagnostic rundown of all the outputs at that location, dismissing your cameras and the girls’ phones, there was something else—you weren’t the only ones watching them. There is still a live feed coming from inside the property.”
“Get into it, and let us know what you find. Scrub everything once you’re done and you’ve sent us a copy,” Caleb orders sternly as he searches high and low for a hidden camera.
