“Motion detectors went off outside the master bedroom. I’ve already dispatched a team to see what the deal is.”
Ash knew that David had everything under control. The man rarely ever slept, and when he did, it was usually here in the main house, on the cot they had in the back room for operatives who were unable or unwilling to leave the main house for one reason or another. David had his own house here on the property, one that had been extensively outfitted to accommodate his chair, but he didn’t seem to like his own company all that much. It was one of many changes in his personality that Ash had noticed since the accident that killed their parents.
Ash grabbed a chair and pulled it up beside David so that he could watch what was happening on his computer screens. David pulled up the feed from each of the cameras positioned in and around Kate Thompson’s house. After a minute or two, they began to catch sight of their operations team. They approached the house with caution, guns drawn, surrounding the outside before the leader looked directly into one of the cameras and held up two fingers. David immediately sent his phone a transmission that informed him that the cameras were not picking up any intruders. If there had been an intruder, David’s message would have told the team leader which camera or cameras had the intruder under surveillance so that the team would know how to proceed.
The team divided into two, a group of men taking up position outside and another going in through both the back and front doors. Ash and David watched closely as the men moved methodically from room to room. When it was pretty clear that the house was empty, David sent the order for the men to stand down. As they watched, the team leader gave instructions for another search, this one designed to find evidence of what, or who, had caused the motion detectors to go off.
“Could have been a raccoon,” David said, punching a few keys on his keyboard to make the camera views go back to their smaller dimensions and other camera feeds and screens of computer code to take their place.
“Could have been,” Ash said. “Warren says the detectives don’t think Miss Thompson is in any actual danger.”
“Even though she clearly witnessed a crime.”
“She doesn’t remember it.”
“The perp doesn’t know that.”
Ash had to agree with that. “Poor guy doesn’t know what he’s getting into though. That woman is quite a firecracker.”
David’s eyebrows rose, as he watched his brother head to the kitchen. “You never said how your discussion with her went.”
Ash padded into the kitchen and filled a mug with water, needing a little caffeine if he was going to be up all night dealing with this.
“Coffee?” he called to David.
“Not that instant crap you drink.”
Ash just shrugged, popping the mug in the microwave and pulling down the tall, thin canister of instant coffee crystals. It didn’t taste all that bad to him, but to each his own.
“So spill the beans. What is Donovan’s long lost love like?”
“Stubborn,” Ash said. “And beautiful. A dangerous combination if there ever was one.”
“How stubborn?”
“She refused to cancel some party she’s supposed to go to this weekend.”
“We’ve had marks do that before.”
“Yeah, well, they were usually doing it for important reasons. I think she was just doing it because she resented me telling her how much of her privacy and freedom we were going to steal from her.”
“You do bring out the best in women sometimes.”
Ash grunted. “Somehow I don’t think it was just me. You should have seen how she reacted to seeing Donovan for the first time after all these years.”
“Did he ever tell you why she blames him? I mean, it was just a schoolyard fight that went too far, right? How is that Donovan’s fault?”
Ash thought it was kind of funny that David would be the one to point that out. A strong argument could be made for the fact that the accident that killed their parents was only an accident. The car hit black ice. No one could have predicted that. No one could have prevented it. Yet, because he was driving, David carried around a lifetime of guilt.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it has something to do with why the boys targeted her brother. She seems to think it was because of something Donovan had done. And I think, to a certain degree, he agrees with her.”
“He shouldn’t. I looked up the case file.”
“David…”
“There was nothing illegal about it. The file falls under the public information act.” He typed something into his computer keyboard. “It says that the fight was initiated because one of the perps said something to the victim about his sister.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Witness statement. I guess one of the party goers saw the initial confrontation that took place an hour or so before the actual attack.”
Curiosity peaked, Ash carried his coffee mug over to David’s workstation and read over his shoulder.