Quickly he opened the app, certain there must have been some kind of mistake. No other camera had registered movement, and he had eight installed both inside and outside on his property.
He waited a moment for a file to load, and then a video began playing and he knew he was looking at a view of his bedroom. The lights in the room were off, but the upstairs hall light was on, and he could see his stairs behind it that led down to his living room.
The image seemed to come from a camera set up on a dresser just feet to the right of where he slept.
A human form silhouetted in front of the light from the hallway stood there, close to the camera.
For several seconds there was no movement from the person, but then an arm lifted, a light came on, and Hanley realized he was looking at the illuminated screen of a Google Pixel phone.
The figure holding the phone waved it back and forth in front of the camera a couple of times, then placed it there, on the dresser. The figure then patted it with a gloved hand. After fifteen seconds, the phone light went out, and the person turned around and walked out into the lighted hallway.
With his back turned, it was impossible to tell much about the intruder.
At the landing the figure flipped off the switch there, extinguishing thelight in the upstairs hallway, and then the intruder turned in the direction of the camera and descended, quickly disappearing, heading down the stairs to the main floor.
Hanley’s phone suddenly came alive with automated text messages alerting him that cameras had registered movement in the kitchen and in the living room. He looked at the videos, one after the next, as what appeared to be a man in a riding cap walked through the house, out onto the porch, down the driveway, and out to the street.
Each time, only the man’s back showed, or his side, the view of his face obstructed by the hoodie he wore.
The pilot came over the PA in the cabin suddenly, breaking Hanley out of his transfixed state watching an intruder leave his home. They were ten minutes from landing at Hampton Road in Norfolk, Virginia.
Court Gentry had been talking to Hightower, kneeling next to him and just behind Hanley, but now he sat down next to his boss and buckled himself into the comfortable leather cabin chair. He said, “Once we get Ortega to Ghost Town, I’ll head back to my boat, catch a few hours’ sleep, and then—”
Matt Hanley was staring straight ahead, his face as white as a ghost. Clearly Court noticed this now. “What is it?”
“It’s trouble,” Hanley said, and then he handed his phone over to Court, with the first video from his bedroom cued up.
Thirty-Four
Dawn was still thirty minutes off, putting enough light in the sky on the sleepy suburban neighborhood to make out the homes, the fences, the yards. A dog barked in the distance, and birds stirred in the trees.
A face covered from the neck to just below the eyes appeared over a wooden fence; the eyes scanned the scene ahead, and then a man climbed over and dropped down on the other side. Landing in a crouch, he rose and moved through a backyard full of pine trees. Here he stopped for a moment at the edge of the tree line, knelt, then looked across a swimming pool covered for the winter and towards a small brick home on the other side of a wrought-iron fence.
Waiting, watching. Finally, the man rose again and sprinted forward.
A minute later the same man put a key in the back door of the brick home, drew a pistol from his belt, took a moment to put on a set of black-rimmed eyeglasses over his eyes, then opened the door.
Flowing in alone, he kept his weapon up in front of him.
Court Gentry used the high-lumen weapon light to search for trip wires, and in this he had help. He wore the glasses Arnold Reyes had worn in the Hirshhorn Museum the day before so his scan of the home could be watched in real time by Matt Hanley, who was several blocks away with the rest of the team in a van.
Court began climbing the stairs; Matt was in his ear, telling him to move slowly, to watch for any other cameras the intruder might have set up, attached to his own network somehow.
Fully five minutes after entering the small home, Court arrived at the phone.
He didn’t touch the device lying there, but he turned on the overhead light in the room and lowered the pistol. “I’m clear,” he said. “There’s a folded note on the dresser next to the camera.”
“We’re on the way,” Hanley said.
Court confirmed receipt of the transmission, but he didn’t wait on Hanley and company before lifting the note and opening it.
Violator. Gray Man. Call the one number saved into this phone via Signal. Phone password is 00001. I will answer. I can’t stop all the killing still to come, but I can stop my part in it. It’s now up to you, chief.
Five minutes later, Hanley and Hightower stood in the bedroom with Court, the phone still on the dresser. Behind them, Arnold had just completed his radio frequency scan of the home, making certain no bugs had been placed.
Two members of the Five Guys, the security team at Ghost Town, were armed with AR-15s, and they stood at windows, securing the property.
“What do you think?” Hightower said.
