“No. Why?”
He drew out an aluminum bat and stood, swinging it. “Shite, it’s a heavy beast. She went to university with you, right? Could it be a souvenir from the States?”
“Unlikely. The only sport she follows is English football.” She nodded at a yellow shirt with a black collar hanging from a hook. “She’s mad for it.”
He ran a hand down the bat. “No scratches, no scuffs, no dirt. Never been used. Is she a hefty kind of a lass?”
“She’s tiny. Why?”
“Because it’s almost as if she’s gone into a sports shop and bought the heaviest thing she could find.”
Thunder cracked, followed almost immediately by pelting rain.
“For protection?” Samira said. “But if she went into hiding, why not take it with her? Too big?”
He ducked into the bathroom, chewing his lip. “Her toothbrush is here. Also something you’d take if you were going into hiding—if you had enough time to pack. Can you see anything else interesting?”
Samira pointed to two monitors on a tiny desk in a corner. Behind them was a rectangle traced in dust, like a box had been removed recently. “It’s not so much what’s here but what’s not. Where are her laptops? Last I was here, she had two—a Mac for work, a PC for gaming. And two phones—one for work, one personal. Plus her tower workstation, her iPad, her Android tablet, her Kindle... She has every device known to man, and none of them are here. Not even the Xbox. No flash drives, no hard drives, no server, no modem that I can see. And no chargers, either. That’s a lot of luggage. If you were committing suicide, why take all of that? And why would you need the chargers?”
“Why, indeed?”
“Whereas if you were Hyland and you’d discovered Charlotte was harvesting information, wouldn’t you want her devices?” She thudded the knuckles of one hand into her other palm. “Hang on. She had security—cameras, alarms...”
She ran downstairs, the staircase wobbling. “The alarm sensor was there.” She pointed to a corner of the ceiling. “It must have been ripped down—look.” Flecks of plaster and paint lay on the otherwise pristine floorboards below.
“There was no security camera on the doorstep,” he said, reaching the bottom of the stairs. “I checked.”
“She definitely had one.”
“Well, then. I think suicide is the least likely of the possibilities, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure how much of a relief that is. Going into hiding also seems unlikely. But what’s the alternative—that Hyland had her killed and this is a cover-up? I’d rather not believe that, either.”
“Maybe she staged the suicide to hide from Hyland? And took her gear to keep it from him.”
“If so, the notepaper and pen and envelopes would be here, wouldn’t they? And the bat wouldn’t.” She stared unseeing at the drawing on the fridge. “What do we do—call the police, anonymously? Someone should be looking for her. How about her family? They should be told—or maybe they already know something. Perhaps we could ask them?”
“At any rate, we should probably ge—”
A clunk. Frowning, he drew his finger to his lips and crept to the window.
“We need to go,” he half whispered, half mouthed.
A silhouette darkened the front door. Even through the glass she recognized the blond hair. God.
“Up,” he mouthed, pointing.
She widened her eyes. What good would that do?
He gestured again, urgently.
“The window is barred,” she whispered.
“I know. Go! Quick!”
Shaking her head, she ran, cringing as her boots clanged on each step. Jamie followed her into the bedroom and picked up the baseball bat. He reached underneath his jacket and pulled out a gun.
“Here,” he said, pulling back the top of the weapon and releasing it with a clunk. He handed it to her.
