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Josie gave him a barely perceptible nod that she understood. His shoulders sagged momentarily in relief and then he hurried off. Nicola scowled once more at Josie for good measure and disappeared after him.
Early on in the week, Nicola had barely shown any signs of life. By the middle of the week, she had become petulant and angry. Now, she was downright caustic. Given that she had lied to all of them, Sandrine included, about her reason for being at the retreat, Josie did not understand her sudden vitriol toward Sandrine. What had Sandrine done or said to make Nicola—and Brian—believe she was hiding something? What could Sandrine possibly be hiding that would have any effect on the retreat? Her personal life and her past were no business of theirs and had no bearing on her ability to help them. She had explained the day they’d arrived that not all the techniques and skills she would present to them during the week would be useful. Processing trauma and treating complex PTSD was not a perfect science. What worked for some of them did not work for others. That didn’t make Sandrine a fraud. But as Brian pointed out, it wasn’t her methods he was calling into question.
I’m not sure she is who she says she is.
What did it mean? What had made them think that? Why were they bringing it up now, at the end of the week when they were stuck here?
Josie’s thoughts were interrupted by a whisper fight going on in the main room. Nicola and Brian. Sighing, she decided to wait until they had settled before returning to her own sleep space.
She reached onto the shelf that held the mugs and took one down, filling it at the sink, and sipping it. The window above the sink was rimed with frost on the outside. Inside there was too much condensation for Josie to even see her own reflection. A succulent in a planter no bigger than the palm of Josie’s hand sat in the center of the windowsill. Josie wondered how it survived in the winter when the main house wasn’t heated. Maybe it was fake. She reached out to touch one of its plump spikes. Fake, indeed. As she took her hand away, something caught her eye. The glint of the half-light on something shiny nestled inside the fake spikes. Josie put her mug down and picked up the planter, pinching the tiny object between her thumb and forefinger.
Staring at it, she muttered, “Son of a bitch.”
TWENTY-TWO
Josie looked toward the doorway to be certain no one was there. Beyond it, Nicola and Brian still spoke to one another in barely audible tones. She heard the sound of the wood-stove door opening and then closing a few seconds later. Then some rustling. Nicola and Brian turning in, finally, although their hushed voices still carried. Josie couldn’t make out anything they were saying, only that they were still engaged in what sounded like a very tense argument. Focusing on the small object in the palm of her hand, Josie’s mind raced.
A hidden camera.
She bounced it in her palm so that it turned over. She saw the casing for a micro SD card. That made sense. There was no way anyone was streaming via Wi-Fi on this mountain. Whoever had put the camera here was recording to the SD card. If it had been going on all week, the person would have had to change it several times and probably charge it. Who had the most access to the kitchen at times when they might not be seen swapping out the card? At the opposite end of the room, the door to Cooper’s closet-turned-bedroom stood ajar. The light from the kitchen cut across the small space, revealing a cot with a pillow and blanket piled on it. Josie stopped halfway to the room.
She could not legally enter it. The room was Cooper’s and even though he was not there, he had a reasonable expectation of privacy. As a law enforcement officer, she had no probable cause to request a warrant to search it—even if this was her jurisdiction. The circumstances did not meet the criteria for a warrantless search either and Cooper was not there to give her permission to search.
But why would Cooper be taping them? Was he doing it on behalf of the property owner? The camera was in the kitchen, where there was no reasonable expectation of privacy, which meant that even if some or all of them on the retreat had an issue with it being there, they would not have much legal recourse at all. Unless the camera also recorded audio. Although there was no law in Pennsylvania against installing a hidden camera on private property, it was a felony to record oral communications without the consent of all parties. There was no way to tell whether or not the camera recorded audio. Her phone didn’t have a micro SD port and she had not brought her laptop.
Brian and Nicola’s voices rose sharply. Nicola said, “Shut up and stay out of it.”
In a sleep-tinged voice, Taryn said, “Both of you shut up! We’re trying to sleep.”
Josie considered the tiny camera again. It could have had a very innocent explanation. The property owner rented out the premises all year round. Perhaps the camera did not record audio and it was merely there to account for any property damage that might occur during rentals. It was, after all, in the kitchen. What scandalous things happened in the kitchen?
Beyond the darkened doorway, Josie heard footsteps. She closed her hand around the camera and picked up her mug, sipping water from it again. Elsewhere in the building, she heard a door close. A moment later came the sound of the toilet flushing and then the door opening again. The floor in the main hall creaked. More rustling and then a long sigh. Someone getting back under their covers.
Her heart ticked back down to a more normal rate. She opened her palm. Everything in her told her that there was no innocent explanation behind this camera. Though any recording it might make of activity in the kitchen would be innocuous, what if there were other cameras elsewhere in the house? The main hall wasn’t of much concern. It would merely show them eating, lounging about, sometimes meditating, and now sleeping. Even the breakout rooms would not show much, assuming there was no audio component to any hidden cams on the property. In the main house, that only left one room, save Cooper’s sleeping area.
Discomfort bubbled inside Josie’s stomach. The bathroom. She thought of how many cases her department had caught in the last several years where someone had put a hidden camera inside a store dressing room or some public bathroom. Was it possible that someone at the retreat had installed a camera inside the bathroom? Were they dealing with a pervert? A digital Peeping Tom? Josie would not have pegged anyone there as the type, but a week wasn’t long enough to make that kind of judgment. With the things she saw on the job on a daily basis, nothing would surprise her. Acid burned her gut as she remembered that Meg’s stalker had planted a camera in her bathroom.
No, Josie thought. It wasn’t possible. Austin Cawley could not have come onto the mountain and planted hidden cameras without being noticed by someone.
Josie tried to quell the nausea she felt at this idea as she pushed her mug toward the back of the counter and placed the tiny camera behind it where no one would see it before walking softly to the bathroom. She closed the door. Leaning against it, she did her box breathing again until her heartbeat calmed a bit. Since it was a common bathroom, there was no legal issue in her searching it. She lifted the toilet seat and the back of the tank. The only other thing in the room was a freestanding sink. No hidden camera. Relief quieted the sick feeling building inside her—for the moment. So they weren’t looking at a pervert, most likely.
Josie tiptoed out of the bathroom and went down the hall, standing at the threshold of the main hall, wondering if she could access the two breakout rooms without waking anyone. She had to try. When would she have another opportunity to go into them without raising questions? The glow of the wood-burning stove gave off enough light for her to maneuver around her slumbering retreat mates. First, she went to her bedding and got her phone so she could snap photos if necessary. The door to the game room creaked as she opened it. It sounded like a scream in the night, but if anyone heard it, they gave no indication. Josie watched each person’s sleeping form, snug in their blankets, for several minutes before she disappeared into the first breakout room. She just had to hope no one would notice the light from under the door.
She moved as quickly and as quietly as she could. The camera would be hidden but it would have to be in a place where it could capture what was happening inside the room. She found its miniature lens twinkling from the puck return of the air hockey table. Leaving it there, she snapped several pictures, doing her best to make it look like she was simply using her phone in case the person who had placed it there accessed its SD card and saw her poking around. Then she stood in front of it and panned the room. Given its position, whoever put it there had done so after Sandrine and Cooper moved the air hockey table. It would have captured their group sessions, more meditation, yoga, and sound baths.
Moments later, she was in the taxidermy room, conducting another search. She found the third camera tucked beneath the wing of one of the stuffed pheasants.
“Son of a bitch.”
Leaving it there, she took more photos, this time attempting to make it look like she was simply taking photos of all the stuffed animals in the room. She tried not to think about all of the private things she had shared with Sandrine in this room during the week. Things about her childhood that she had not shared in the group sessions. If the cameras had an audio component, it was even more of a violation than taking secret videos. When she finished, she went back to the kitchen. Legally, she could collect the other two cameras as evidence. However, if the killer saw that all three cameras were missing rather than just one, she couldn’t predict how he or she might react. She didn’t want to risk additional conflict if she could avoid it. She had to figure out what to do with the camera she had found there, especially since she had already moved it. Her mug was where she’d left it with the camera tucked safely out of sight behind it. She took a sip of the water, her mind on overdrive. Who would have placed the cameras in the main house? Were there cameras in their cabins, as well? Josie had not seen any in her own but she hadn’t been looking. It would be easy enough to return to her cabin after daylight to look. She could not search the other cabins, however, not without permission from their occupants.
“Are you okay?”
Josie jumped, the water in her mug sloshing up and splashing across her chest. Luckily, her other palm had closed over the camera, holding it out of view. Alice stood in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She picked up a towel as she crossed the room and held it out to Josie. “I’m sorry I scared you. When I woke up, you weren’t there.”
Josie set the mug down and took the towel, dabbing her chest with it. She managed a smile. “I came in to show Brian where the rest of the wood was stored and then I thought I’d have some water. It’s easier to stay awake in here than lying in my bed.”
Josie watched Alice carefully to see if her eyes darted toward the succulent on the windowsill, but they didn’t. She ran through her interaction with Brian. He hadn’t looked at it either. If Cooper hadn’t planted the camera, Josie might discover who had by whether or not they glanced at the plant to see if the camera was still there. Then again, that would require her getting each person into the kitchen, close enough to the plant to check it. What would happen if they noticed that it wasn’t there? They’d have no way of knowing that Josie took it.
