“Because she was wandering around looking lonely and lost. Why, are you implying she’s not safe with me?”
James sounded defensive.
“It’s not that.”
He tried to equivocate, but, truth be told, it was that. Why would he take Ellie anywhere near possible sabotage, betrayal, danger? The girl had been through enough.
“She’s safer out there with me than off by herself without you.”
There was a challenge in James’ voice. Carter clamped down on his anger; tried to change the subject, get back on track.
“So, you haven’t seen her in a while, then.”
“I told you, not since she came to the control room this afternoon. It was around three. Why, did you lose her?”
“Very funny,” Carter said through tight teeth. “No, I didn’t lose her, but I can’t find her.”
“Call Martina. She ought to know where Ellie’s staying, if she’s not staying with you.”
“I did,” Carter replied, not bothering to go into details about Ellie’s and his sleeping arrangements. “She told me where she put Ellie. I’m in her room now. She’s gone.”
“Maybe she got hungry? Went down to the kitchen for a snack?”
That didn’t seem likely. In the short time he’d known her, Carter had already learned that Ellie disliked putting people out on her account. On the other hand, she did like to eat. He’d seen her pack away more food than someone her size ought to be able to. It was worth a shot.
“I’ll call Florence and find out.”
“If that doesn’t pan out, call me back,” James said. “I can check footage around the house. We might be able to pick up where she went.”
“Why don’t you start now?” Carter suggested. He told him which guest room Ellie was supposed to be in.
A tick of silence on the other end of the phone. Then James said, “You think something’s wrong. You think this is more than her going for a snack or maybe a walk or something.”
It wasn’t a question. Carter swallowed, trying to force down the rising sensation that, yes, something was wrong.
“This doesn’t seem like her,” he admitted, drumming his fingers on the nearby nightstand.
“Hmmm. You’d probably know better than me. I don’t know what trouble she could’ve gotten into around here, but I’ll get started. You might check with Tracy. They seemed to hit it off. Maybe she’s with Tracy? Call me back when you know something.”
The line went dead. Quickly, Carter put in a call to the kitchen. Florence ran her kitchen like a restaurant; an evil overlord more like. Nobody got in and out that Florence didn’t know something about. However, she claimed not to have seen Ellie at all, although she did confirm sending supper up to her room during the dinner hour.
Carter tried Tracy next, but the driver’s phone went to voice mail.
That was odd.
Next, he redialed James.
“Carter.”
He knew instantly by James’ tone that he’d discovered something.
“What’d you find?”
“Get down to the control room,” was all James said.
Carter was out the bedroom door before the call ended. He raced down the back stairs, taking the fastest way down, but he couldn’t seem to go quickly enough. Alarm gripped his heart. This wasn’t right. He was supposed to take care of Ellie. She should have been safe inside Sean and Ciara’s house. What could the fool woman have gotten into now?
Intermixed, overplayed with his frustration with her, was greater frustration with himself. If he hadn’t been acting like a jerk…if he hadn’t run her out of his room, she might be there now. Safe. With him, like she was supposed to be. No, he couldn’t keep an eye on her permanently, but here she’d been on his home turf, his stomping grounds, and apparently he hadn’t been able to protect her even here. An ugly sense of failure belied his customary confidence as he burst into the control room, which was empty except for James and a couple of his techs. They glanced up as he entered, nodded.
Ignoring them, Carter made his way over to James, who occupied the central seat in the middle of the room. He was studying multiple screens. The room was dim, lit by the glow of computer monitors. A quirky green-blue glow lit up James’ features, softening the sharp angles of his face.
“What did you find?”
James didn’t look away from the screen, just clicked a couple of different frames.
“I started in the hallways closest to her rooms. Here she is, at 10:28, out in the corridor. She appears to be walking away from her room.”
He could see that. “Go on.”
James clicked a couple more frames, saying as he did, “I could show you her path through the house, but that’s unnecessary. Here’s where I tracked her to.”
On the screen, Carter saw Ellie from behind, wearing a familiar looking sweater. She was standing by the French doors leading out to the back patio. She punched numbers into the keypad on the wall beside the doors.
“Where did she get the code?” he asked aloud.
“Beats me. That wasn’t on camera. Obviously somebody gave it to her, because she gets outside without setting off the alarm.”
The cameras confirmed this. Both men watched as Ellie’s slightly grainy figure opened one of the glass doors and passed out into the night.
Carter felt his confusion growing. What on earth was she thinking? Who would have given her the code to open the doors to the outside? Was this a set up?
“It gets worse from here,” James said quietly.
Dread settled in his bones.
“What do you mean, worse?”
“Just watch.”
Again, clicking through frames, James changed camera angles, showing nighttime, grainy shots of Ellie making her way through the gardens, towards Mrs. Costas’ special pool. Dozens of questions raced through Carter’s mind, but he kept mute, watching, waiting for what James had seen.
“Last shot,” James murmured.
There were no cameras directly on the pool itself and several feet back, to give Mrs. Costas privacy for her swims. Nevertheless, in the corner of the particular frame James pulled up Carter could see Ellie’s profile, as she stood right inside the camera’s line of vision. She was glancing around, like she was looking for somebody. Then her face turned away from the camera. The next thing Carter saw was her head snap forward, her body crinkling like a piece of paper in a fist. She dropped to her knees, then face planted on the ground. Her body was dragged out of the footage. Her head disappeared last, and she was gone.
The screen went black.
Carter swore.
“That’s it?”
“It’s all I’ve found so far. We’re still checking, but whoever did this knew how to avoid being seen.”
“James, cameras fourteen and fifteen are down,” spoke up a tinny female voice. Carter looked to his left. Liberty, James’ second and on again, off again girlfriend.
This time it was James’ turn to swear in frustration.
“How are they doing this?” Carter demanded.
“Because we’re failures, Carter,” James snapped, wheeling his office chair past Carter and over to Liberty to check her screen.
“We think they’ve hacked our system,” spoke up Eric, another tech seated to Carter’s right. “See here? They uploaded footage recorded earlier; normal looking stuff, you know? It was played on a loop. Hard to catch if you’re not looking directly at the time stamp, so it took us a while to track it down. Nobody could do this if they weren’t already hacked into the system.”