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Seventeen
THE FIRST THINGI saw when I stepped into surveillance headquarters was Robby and Taylor—with their hands in each other’s back pockets.
Before that image could burn itself too deep into my memory, I coughed.
They sprung apart at the sound, but—
Too late. Couldn’t blink away the afterimage.
“Where’s Glenn?” I asked.
“In town,” Taylor answered, just as Robby asked, “Where’s the principal?”
“I need to talk to Glenn,” I said.
Doghouse, sitting at a desk across the room, lifted the receiver of a landline and held it out to me.
I walked over, took it, dialed Glenn’s number, and mentally prepared myself to quit—right here, in front of both of my nemeses—and ignoring all the questions in my head. Would Glenn yell at me? Would Robby and Taylor gloat to see me fail? Was I forfeiting any chance at London?
My body felt as tight as a wire as I waited.
But Glenn’s phone went to voicemail.
“It’s good you’re here, anyway,” Robby said, as I hung up. “We’ve had some activity on the Stapleton property.”
I shook my head. “The shots? That was just his dad hitting bottles in the ravine.”
“No,” Robby said then. “At his place in the city.” Then Robby glanced toward the monitors. “Taylor, pull it up,” he said. All business. Like a liar.
But what she pulled up on the monitors made me take a step closer.
Then another.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Yeah.”
They were images from the cameras around Jack’s Houston house. All the first-floor windows had been spray-painted with pink hearts and the name “Jack” over and over.
I studied different footage from different angles. “Every downstairs window, huh?”
Robby nodded.
“Was it the Corgi Lady? Do we know?”
“We’re ninety-nine percent sure it was,” Robby said.
Taylor switched to footage from earlier of a woman in the act.
“That’s her? Did we get a face ID?”
Robby shook his head. “No, but she left gifts.”
“Gifts?”
“Yep. On the front porch,” Robby said. Then he added, “In gift bags.”
“What were they?”
