Page 379 of A Matter of Time

He had a point.

Probably.

Or…they’d checked out the house and left. And really, did they have the manpower to stake out all the places I might be? Did they really care? No matter what Hefron, or Moore, had said to Sam, they really didn’t care about me. The danger everyone cared about was Rego James, and I had no reason to return to his club.

“Jory!”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I’ll check back in soon.”

Once I’d hung up on him, I turned the phone off and then, on my way to the house, I stopped at a gas station, took the SIM card out of my phone, destroyed it, then bought a new burner. The people at the store appreciated me giving them the old one. It just needed a new SIM and they had lots of those.

You always wonder why people go looking around creepy places at night. In every horror movie I’d ever seen, it had been my question as well. The fact of the matter was, though, that sometimes you had to go to scary places in the evening because other people would see you during the day. So when I parked down the block and ran to the house, armed with a flashlight and my burner phone, I figured that even though I had an irrational fear of Michael Myers being in the house waiting for me, logically I was safe—it was just dark. This was the rational thought I held on to even as my heart threatened to pound out of my chest.

I slipped into the basement through the window and fell five feet or so to the floor. I was sure that something terrifying was waiting in the shadows to get me, even though rats were probably the only spooky things in the place. I was expecting jars of body parts but found only a washer and dryer, a sink, and a counter that folded clothes were stacked up on. Even though I knew that it wasn’t the room Caleb and I had been held in, I checked it over anyway, looking for anything that didn’t fit. I went to the lint trap on the dryer and found it clean; I went through the small wastebasket and was really disappointed when there was nothing at all. When I was satisfied that I had seen anything it was possible to see in this room, I went through the door, using the sleeve of my sweater to turn the knob, and into the kitchen of the house.

It was boring. What had started out as a nightmare quickly became tedious. The house was clean. Like a-maid-service-had-been-through-it clean. Going from room to room yielded nothing at all. The inside didn’t match the outside either. It became clear that all Greg Fain had needed was a landscaper. Inside, the house looked nothing like the home of Norman Bates and more like something that belonged in an Ikea catalog. Everything was new and shiny; all the bells and whistles were there, from brushed steel and wood decor to a fairly large TV. The second floor was just as nice, and next to the bathroom was a steam room. As I stood in the master bedroom on the second floor, I had to wonder what in the world had prompted a guy like Greg Fain to get caught up in a kidnapping. But maybe all this stuff had cost a lot of money. Everyone needed money, so perhaps Dane forking over ten million had been his primary motivation.

The only weird thing I found in the bedroom was a picture frame in the wastebasket beside the armoire. The glass was broken, but there was no picture in it. I had no idea what that meant but made a mental note of it anyway. Back downstairs in the den, I looked for any papers that would give me an idea of who Greg Fain was. But again, there was nothing. What really was weird was the extent of the nothing. All the desk drawers were empty, and there was nothing on the sides as well. On CSI, they always found a clue either under a drawer or on the side, or taped to the bottom of something, but no such luck in Mr. Fain’s office. Nothing inside the air conditioner vent, or the vents on the floor, and no telltale drops of blood. It was simply anticlimactic, and I was disappointed. There were no clues to be found.

Still, when I was back outside, I felt better. It was a clear night, and not being inside calmed me. I had just watched way too many horror movies in my life to be comfortable in a dark house. I let the shiver pass through me and took a steadying breath when I was standing alone in the backyard. Only then did I see the shed. How I had missed it when I walked around the house the first time was beyond me, but nonetheless, it was there, white in the moonlight. I saw the dead patch of grass where I guessed the outside freezer had been, where they’d found Greg Fain’s body, and I saw all the little flags in the ground where the police had marked it. When I realized I had to roll the door open on the shed, I knew, of course, this was the place.

Inside was as I remembered—the concrete floor, the metal walls, and the absence of windows. It wasn’t necessarily a scary place, just odd to be there without being tied up. I checked over every inch of the room and came up with nothing, not even a gum wrapper or some dirt. It was pristine.

I walked around the shed using the flashlight, looked at the grass surrounding it, and found not a thing even remotely useful or interesting. I walked down the alley on the other side of the fence, trying to figure out which way, if any, the kidnapper had driven the car, but it was useless. On the way back, I called Sam’s cell.

“Hello?”

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Jory.” He sounded so relieved.

“How are you feeling?”

“Baby, where are you?”

“At the house.” I sighed.

“Okay.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“I could’ve told you that. They pulled everything outta there, J. The crime scene guys went over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

I looked at the house as I scaled the fence into the backyard, and it was only then that I noticed the window. “Oh shit, Sam, there’s an attic.”

“What?”

“I didn’t see a ladder or anything. Nothing was open on the second floor. Did they find an attic?”

“I’m sure they did. They’re trained, you know.”

“You’re funny.”

“Always have been, but listen, don’t go back in the house. Drive here to me.”

“I have to check the whole house, Sam. I don’t want to miss anything.”

“Love, don’t. I’m gonna call Hefron right now while you drive over here.”