"When were these taken?" he asks, voice deadly quiet.
"Yesterday," I whisper. "In the living room. I was alone... I thought I was alone."
Declan takes out his phone, already moving. "Stay here. Don't touch anything else." Into the phone: "Ethan, get back to the house. Now! We have a situation."
Gloria flips through the photos with increasing horror. "How is this possible? How did someone get these?"
"Not sure yet," Declan says, his gaze sweeping the room with new intensity.
"There's something else," Sophie says, carefully extracting a small white card that had fallen from the envelope onto the table. She holds it gingerly by the corners, eyes widening as she reads.
"What does it say?" I ask, though part of me already knows, already feels the sick dread pooling in my stomach.
Sophie swallows hard. "'Hello, Little Doll. Did you miss me? I've missed you. It's been lonely withoutyou.'"
The room tilts sideways. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision. Little Doll. The name Charles used to whisper while his hands moved where they shouldn't, while I froze in confused terror, too young to understand what was happening but old enough to know it was wrong.
But Charles is dead. He is as dead as one can be. Closing my eyes, I can still recall the relief I felt when I realized he could never hurt me again.
So who...
The front door slams open, and Ethan and Mateo rush in, weapons drawn. They take in the scene in an instant: the photos spread across the table, my ashen face, Declan's protective stance.
"What happened?" Ethan demands, holstering his gun when he sees there's no immediate threat.
"Someone's been watching Jade," Declan explains, gesturing to the photos. "Inside the house. Yesterday."
Mateo picks up one of the images, examining it closely. His eyes narrow, and he pulls out a small penlight from his pocket, studying the corners of the photo.
"These are still frames," he says, voice hard. "Not photographs. Pulled from video footage."
"A hidden camera?" Ethan asks sharply.
"Has to be," Mateo confirms. "The quality, the angle, it's consistent in all of these. Fixed position, probably very small."
Ethan looks at Mateo, who is already pulling equipment from his pockets. A small handheld scanner and what looks like a modified smartphone. "On it."
He moves methodically around the kitchen, then leads the way to the living room. We follow in tense silence, watching as he sweeps the device in slow arcs.
"Our security system monitors for electronic intrusions, unauthorized access, perimeter breaches," he explains as he works. "But some of the newest micro cameras are completely passive until activated remotely. They don't emit continuous signals, don't connect to networks unless commanded to, which makes them nearly impossible to detect with standard sweeps."
His scanner suddenly emits a soft beep. Mateo freezes, eyes locked on the device. Then he moves with deliberate precision toward the sound system beneath the bookshelves, near the east windows, the same vantage point from which all the photos were taken.
"There," he says quietly, pointing to a slim component on the stereo. "Don't touch it."
Ethan steps closer, examining it carefully. It's a sleek, modern device, something nobody would notice among the stereo components.
Mateo carefully tilts his scannertoward it. "It's a micro camera."
"How did it get here?" Gloria asks, her voice shaking slightly.
"Someone brought it in," Ethan says simply. "Someone who had access to the house."
The implication hangs heavy in the air. Someone got past not just the exterior security, but into the house itself. Placed an object in plain sight, knowing we'd all walk past it daily without noticing.
"But the system..." I begin.
"It could have been here prior to the installation of the security system and only activated remotely yesterday," Mateo says, his expression grim. "Or brought in by someone who entered with an authorized visitor."
