Page 115 of Hard Heart

Another woman materialised from the living room, my age, with a nose piercing and hair such a dark brown it was almost black. Her aura said she came out of the same mould as Jerry, and I suspected she was one of the people who’d been keeping tabs on me recently.

She held out a hand. “Spider.”

“Spider?”

“Catch me if you can.” She sauntered off as if she owned the place, and I wasn’t sure whether to follow her or yell at Jerry.

“What exactly is the plan here?” I demanded.

“We have an idea how a third party could have gotten in here without being recorded, and we need to test the hypothesis.”

“You do? How?”

“Go see Ari, and she’ll explain.” Jerry waved a hand towards the basement door. “She’s down there.”

“Fine.” I took two steps in that direction and turned. “Hold on, why is she in the basement?”

But Jerry was already gone.

I jogged down the stairs and heard voices, two people, not one. Ari was in the box room at the side, along with… Seriously? Was this bring-your-child-to-work day? I should have told Raelene. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom, and I realised it wasn’t a kid at all, it was a fully grown adult, just a very small one.

“Alexa?” When Levi said she was tiny, he hadn’t been kidding.

She glanced up from her laptop. “Make yourself useful and find coffee.”

He hadn’t been wrong about the attitude either. “I’m not your bloody skivvy.”

“Well, it seems as if I’m yours, so…”

“Alexa…” Ari warned. “Serafina didn’t start this.”

“Neither did I.”

“But we’re going to finish it, so you need to focus on getting these cameras working.”

“Where’s Chase?”

“You sent him to buy a warmer sweater.”

“Yes, an hour ago.”

“Thirty minutes ago, and do you see a Target around here?” Then to me, “Alexa’s just upset because she got bested by a chicken.”

“What?” I asked dumbly. “An actual live chicken?”

These people were bananas.

“Well, it wasn’t a dead one, was it?” Alexa grumbled in reply.

“Where? Where is the chicken?”

“California. Duh.”

“I don’t understand this conversation.”

“The chickens go in a chicken house at night,” she told me, speaking slowly as if I were a child. “And Nolan lets them out every morning. But I have better things for him to do in the mornings, so I figured I’d put the door on a timer, but did the chickens appreciate my efforts? No. They pecked me.”

“I’d pay good money to see a video of that,” Ari said.