Page 24 of Night Prey
He didn’t want to talk about himself. Message received. She led the way to the kitchen.
He set his computer on the island. “I feel bad that my parents are alive, and I don’t see them when you would likely give anything to have yours back.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I would.” She took a seat at the counter.
He settled on the stool next to her, and she caught a whiff of his scent. The leather in his jacket mixed with some spicy cologne or shampoo. It was a manly smell that she liked, and she had to fight a strong urge to inch closer while he slid the laptop between them.
“FYI, I got a call from the computer lab when I got here,” he said, his focus on his computer as he opened it. “They started on Junior’s laptop, but it’s encrypted, so it will take longer. If they can even crack it.”
“Only one reason to encrypt a computer. You have highly confidential information you don’t want others to see.”
“And in my experience, it’s often illegal information.” He opened a file on his computer, his long fingers flying over the keyboard. “I had a tech review the files overnight, and he isolated the video to all males arriving and exiting the building. Take a good look at each guy and let me know if any of them fit the shooter’s description.” He started a video playing.
She studied each man as they moved, and mentally dressed them in the shooter’s clothing, but none of them moved right. The video came to an end.
She leaned away from him. “The shooter had kind of a swagger. None of these guys did. I suppose it was too good to be true to think the shooter waltzed in the front door big and bold for us to see.”
“We have video on the other entrances and the front desk too. And he could’ve come early and hid out, so if he’s not in any of these clips, I’ll have Tech go through the earlier ones.”
He started the new file playing, and the screen filled with the side entrance by the ballroom, the entrance she’d used when she’d arrived. Oh, how naïve it had been to worry about seeing old classmates. If she’d only known. Never in a million years would she have thought the night would come to an abrupt end due to a murder, one she was being framed for.
Not if she could help it.
She counted the men this time as they passed before her eyes. By the end of the recording, they’d looked at twenty-seven guys, none remotely right for the man who’d terrified her.
“Next,” she said, not taking her focus from the screen.
“This is the last door that was open that night. The others were accessible only with a keycard. He could have booked a room to change clothes and leave much later.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Malone said.
“I’m working on that premise with Londyn,” he said. “She’s working on comparing the registered guests to the reunion list and arranging interviews with all the males. She’s asking them to voluntarily allow her to take their photos. Anyone who says no will automatically be placed on a prime suspect list. We hope you’ll look at the photos when they’re available.”
“Of course.”
He started the video, and she watched to the end. “Sorry. No.”
They reviewed the front desk files too, but none of the men were right.
Ian got out his phone. “Let me text our tech staff to keep compiling the earlier videos.”
She watched him tap the keys, his concentration pinned fully on the phone. They were done in the house and would head out to her garage and open up boxes. Somehow, she felt as if they would be opening Pandora’s box and more trouble would come tumbling out. If not trouble, old memories to stir her emotions and deepen her pain.
Joy too, though, from flipping through old photo albums of her parents. She’d taken one special family photo into foster care with her and had clutched that frame to her heart whenever her parents came to mind. She burned the photo into her mind in case she lost it. And as she got older, memories of how her parents looked had faded, and the photo gave her a way to remember what they looked like.
Just thinking about it brought tears that clouded her vision. She hid her eyes from Ian and rubbed them away.
Ian stood. “Ready to go to the garage?”
She slid off the stool and led the way. She could do this. She hadn’t felt up to it before. Why, she didn’t know, but she’d put it off for years. Now she had a purpose, and whatever she found, even if it hurt her heart, could bring her and Ian closer to discovering the truth about her parents’ deaths.
She pulled her shoulders back and went straight to the first stack of boxes.
Ian pulled a Leatherman from his pocket and sliced open the top one. She glanced in to see games and toys. She lifted out the game calledPeanut Panic.The board held a motorized cart that went around tracks and scooped up peanuts.
Her heart melted. “This was one of my favorite games.”
Ian took out the box. “I’ve never heard of it.”
