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“No, definitely not. Still human, still male, still mature, but not the same.” He steps onto the front porch. “I can—” He breaks off suddenly, his gaze turning toward the street, and I look in that direction too. A man is crossing, eyes on us.
“Hey,” he calls as he reaches the sidewalk and starts up Cam’s little path. “One of you must be Cam’s boyfriend.”
Hope lights me up. “That’s me. Do you know where he is?” Maybe he hit his head accidentally and went to his neighbors for help.
The man reaches the bottom of the porch steps and stops. “What do you mean? He’s not here?”
The hope drains away, and my shoulders slump. “No.”
“I’m Garrett,” Garrett says, holding a hand out to the man, who comes up the porch steps to shake it. “This is Micah. He was supposed to meet Cam, but he’s not here.”
“Lenny,” the guy says, jerking a thumb toward his chest. “He was here an hour ago. I came over to tell him off for leaving the front door open. People like Cam—he’s quiet, you know? Good neighbor—and I try to keep an eye out, but this still isn’t the greatest neighborhood. He asked if I knew anyone who wanted to rent his place, and I know he locked the door when I left.”
“It was locked when I opened it just now,” Garrett confirms, and Lenny gives him an odd look.
“How’d you get in?”
“Back door,” I mutter, not really listening. The other human must have come through the back door. That’s why I only smelled him in the kitchen. There’s a gate from Cam’s yard to the alley, isn’t there? I’m sure I saw one, though I wasn’t paying much attention.
Lenny’s mouth is set in a firm line. “Something about this is wrong,” he declares. “Cam was looking forward to you coming. You tried calling him?”
“His phone’s here.” I’m not sure how much to tell Lenny—he might want to call the human police, and that would be a disaster—but the sound of footsteps interrupts us in any case. I look over my shoulder into the house to see Gideon and Alistair coming down the hall, followed by Zac. Alistair’s face is unusually grim, and it makes him look different.
“Full house,” Lenny says, sounding a little suspicious.
“My cousins.” I point them out. “And this is—”
“I know you. Cam’s friend. You’ve been here before.”
Alistair nods curtly. “You live across the street, right? Seen anyone hanging around?”
Lenny’s face goes hard. “You think someone took Cam? Fuck. It was probably that creep who’s been watching his house. I told Cam about him, but he brushed it off.”
“Someone was watching his house?” Gideon and Zac say it in unison. Alistair’s breathing deeply, which I know means he’s smelling for stuff. Garrett told me his cousin has had some pretty intense training in scent tracking and can process smells in a way most people don’t believe is possible.
But my mind is joining dots. “His stalker. It’s got to be him. I… Where’s Cam’s phone?” I start to push past my cousins to go back inside, but Gideon stops me and silently hands over Cam’s phone. I unlock it with shaking hands, grateful that Cam gave me the code one time, and open his texts. “Here.” I give it back to Gideon. He’s the expert here. “The guy bought a puzzle, filed a chargeback before it shipped, then went ballistic when he didn’t get the puzzle and Cam reported him for fraud. He’s been sending harassing texts and emails ever since, even though Cam keeps blocking him.”
Gideon scrolls through the texts. I don’t know why Cam never deleted them, but that’s got to be good now, right? We can use them to find him… right? Finally, Gideon looks up and exchanges a glance with Alistair, then turns to Lenny. “Can you describe the man who’s been watching the house? Tall, short—”
“Man, I can do better than that. I got a picture.” He hauls out his phone, taps the screen a few times, swipes, then holds it out. We all lean in to look. The man on the screen is in profile, standing in front of Cam’s house. It’s hard to tell from the image, but he looks to be tall, medium build. White, dark hair, average features. But I recognize him.
“That’s the guy who was knocking when I came to get Cam the first time.” I explain how he ran off when I arrived. “I wouldn’t have remembered him, but it was weird.”
“Can I text this to myself?” Gideon asks Lenny.
“Knock yourself out.”
When Gideon hands the phone back, he looks Lenny in the eye. “Thanks for your help. We’ve got this from here.”
Lenny, unsurprisingly, appears intimidated, but he squares his shoulders. “You boys connected?”
Gideon says nothing, but Alistair smiles. It’s not nice. He doesn’t look like himself at all.
Nodding slowly, Lenny says, “My kid is home, so I gotta sit this out. But call if you need anything. Cam’s good people.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, feeling guilty for the assumptions I made about him when I first met Cam.
He gives me an up-nod, then turns and walks back across the street. “What’s the plan?” I ask quietly. “Did you find anything?”
