“She’s bossy like that,” Luca joked, eyes on the screen.
“What is it you’re doin’, anyway?” Reese asked, coming to stand beside Brantley and Trey.
“I’m makin’ friendly with some of the cameras at the local businesses.”
“Makin’ friendly?” Reese laughed. “What you mean to say is you’re hackin’ into them.”
“Call it what you will.” Luca continued to stare at the screen. “What time frame are we lookin’ for?”
Reese glanced at Brantley, waited for him to answer.
“Try around twenty-one hundred last night. Baz said he was at the diner with JJ. He got to Moonshiners shortly after that.”
“Nine o’clock,” Luca said. “Got it.”
They stood there for several minutes, watching images play across the screen. Nothing worth noting happened, unfortunately. Thanks to it being New Year’s Eve, there were a lot of people out and about. Even small towns celebrated holidays like this one.
Not that Reese expected them to get lucky enough to catch Dante and his captor chatting it up on the street.
“What about JJ?” Luca asked. “Doesn’t she have cameras?”
“She did,” Brantley confirmed. “House blew up.”
Luca whistled long and low. “Heard about that.” His fingers moved faster on the keyboard. “Shouldn’t matter, though. If I know JJ, she’s got them recordin’, and that information would be saved in the cloud.”
Brantley peered over at Reese, forehead wrinkled to reflect his confusion.
Reese merely shook his head, letting him know they’d get into that later. While Brantley was good at a lot of things, technology wasn’t his strong suit.
“All right. Here we go.” Luca’s fingers stopped, his hand moving to the mouse. “Anyone ever tell JJ she’s paranoid? She’s got half a dozen cameras rollin’ twenty-four seven. Might be considered overkill.”
Reese didn’t respond to Luca’s musings.
Luca pointed at the monitor. “That looks to be JJ pullin’ into her driveway. Parkin’. Gettin’ out.”
They watched on the screen as JJ walked up to the front door, unlocked it.
“That’s Dante,” Brantley noted, stepping closer.
Sure enough, that was Dante Greenwood joining her on the porch. The camera was a bit grainy and a little glitchy, so every move they made looked pieced together, but it was easy to discern what was going on. Once inside, they watched as Dante gave one more look out the door before closing it.
“Pull up another camera,” Brantley ordered, his impatience beginning to bleed through.
Luca skimmed the other camera recordings until he found the one that overlooked the living room.
For the next ten minutes, they watched things play out just as JJ had said. Dante moved from room to room, they shared a brief conversation, then JJ disappeared down the hall in the direction of her bedroom. When she returned, she held up her gun, clearly showing Dante she had it. They spoke again and then JJ was walking off. Then the camera feed blipped and went fuzzy.
“What happened?”
“Looks like it got turned off.”
“Why’d she have her gun?” Brantley asked.
“She said Dante told her to get it,” Reese answered. When Brantley shot a questioning look his way, he added, “I just got off the phone with Baz. She doesn’t seem to know why. He just told her to keep it on her.”
“Maybe he was hopin’ she would protect him?” Holly pondered.
“She have a view of the kitchen?” Reese asked.
