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Now that I’m moving, my thoughts shift. Even as I’m running, my brain is clicking away. Sorting through the steps I need to take, trying to figure out ways to complete them faster.
I take my emotions—fear, guilt, anger, pain—and jam them into a box to deal with later.
Once we get to the center of the wooded area, where the trees are most closely packed together, we stop. I drop to the ground and whip out the laptop while Rylan stands guard above me. He quietly speaks into his earpiece, updating Cole and Leo.
My fingers fly over the keyboard. I shut out everything but the screen in front of me.
It’s like lining up dominoes. Once I have each piece in place, everything falls.
Brute-force attacking to gain the Wi-Fi password so I can access his network.
In a few clicks, the smart locks on the exterior doors are all disabled.
I scour his security system for every sensor, every alarm—and I jam all of them.
Cool rationality dampens my rage, at least for the moment.
“All doors and sensors down,” I murmur. “Searching for delivery footage.”
Leo’s low rumble comes back. “Looping in surveillance footage now.”
“Get to the edge of the tree line,” Cole orders. “Be ready to move on my command.”
Rylan and I move forward, stopping just before the trees transition to grass. I find a short recording of a delivery from a week ago and set it to replay. “Starting the delivery footage. I’ll activate the doorbell in a second.”
“We’ll head to the back of the garage,” Rylan whispers to me. “Then along the house until we get to the first set of windows. That’s where we’ll enter.”
I glance up from the screen, looking between the trees at the yard just beyond. It’s a stretch of bright green grass, the pond glinting in the evening sun. If not for the horrific circumstances, it would be beautiful.
And then.
There’s something else in the distance.
A small figure sprinting across the grass, hair streaming behind.
Coppery curls.
The same blue shirt I watched her put on this morning.
Thea!
My heart leaps into my throat. “Thea!”
“What?” Cole sounds confused.
She’s moving fast, getting closer to us.
There’s no thought. I drop the laptop and run. Bursting through the trees, no worry about noise, all thought of concealment gone. I just need to get to her.
Footsteps are coming up quick behind me. Rylan.
“Thea’s out of the house,” he says, his voice still pitched low. “She’s running, we’re moving toward her—”
There’s still at least two-hundred feet before I reach Thea. Eyes glued to her, I push myself faster than I’ve ever gone before.
She hasn’t seen me yet; she’s focused on getting away, reaching the trees, no doubt hoping to hide in there.
I’m about to yell to her when another voice bellows across the lawn.
