But he slipped through the entry on his own. Meanwhile, I stood there shivering in fear, and straining my ears to hear anything that might indicate he’d come upon the intruder. Or intruders. Nothing.
I dug out my cell and started to dial 911, but I quickly realized I didn’t know Cole’s address. Moving away from the door, I was about to head down the drive to look for a house number when I heard movement behind me.
I screamed and jumped around to face the criminal, but it was just Cole on the back step, looking pale and completely rattled.
“Are they in there?” I asked him, holding my phone close in case I needed to dial quickly.
He shook his head. “No.”
And then I thought of his sweet dog. “Ohmigod! Bailey!”
Cole came off the step and over to me. “She’s fine,” he said. “She was in her crate.”
I blinked. “She was in her crate?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And we didn’t do that. So, somehow somebody got her into her crate and locked her up.”
“Okay, so what’d they take?”
“The file,” he said.
“The what?”
“The murder file, Lily. It’s gone. That’s the only thing missing.”
“But…but…” I tried to make sense of that. “What the hell would a robber want with an old murder file?”
“I don’t think a robber would want it,” he said. “But the murderer would.”
The air left my lungs so quickly that my knees buckled. Cole got an arm around me just in time or I would’ve scraped them on the pavement.
“You okay?” he said, holding on to me until I was steady enough to stand on my own.
“Yeah,” I lied. “We talked to the murderer today?” I said weakly.
Cole looked back toward the house. “Maybe.”
I put a hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, Cole.”
He nodded. The bravado from a few moments before was gone.
“Okay…okay…” I said, trying to think this thing through. “What if there’s a logical explanation? What if your mom took it and the broken window is just a coincidence or something?”
“She’s been at work all day,” he reminded me. “And if she came home and found that on the kitchen table, Lily, she’d be calling me two seconds later to tell me to get my butt home. She never would’ve waited till later to say something to me. The window and the dog can’t be a coincidence.”
I was shaking all over now, and Cole led me to a set of lawn chairs. “We have to call the police,” I said.
Cole looked back toward the house. “And tell them what? That I had a murder file that’d been illegally obtained by one of their own guys, and it got stolen?”
“Well, at least you can report the breakin!” I insisted. “Cole, if he left any prints behind, the police might be able to catch him and then we can tell them about the file. We just won’t tell them where it came from.”
Cole considered that for a minute, then nodded. “Okay. But let me take you home first.”
I bit my lip. It felt like he was dismissing me. “I can stay,” I told him.
But Cole reached for my hand and said, “I think I’d feel better if you were locked safely behind that big gate on your grandmother’s estate.”
What neither of us said out loud was Unless she is the murderer.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Cole, if the murderer really did come here and steal the file, then you and your mom are in more danger than I am.”
Cole rubbed his temples. I could tell he was trying to keep it together even though the breakin had unnerved him.
“The guys are gonna be here at eight,” he said. “Which means we’ll be safe for the night at least. Tomorrow Mom’s headed to Newport News to stay with her boyfriend. He lives there.”
“Maybe you should go with her,” I said. “Or call that guy you know from the FBI and tell him everything that we’ve found out so far, and that your house was broken into. Maybe he can do something.”
Cole smiled. “I’m not gonna crash my mom’s night off with her boyfriend,” he said. “And Special Agent Presco isn’t going to do anything other than tell me there’s not much he can do. We need more, Lily.”
I looked to the window. “But this just got really serious, Cole. Dangerous even.”
“Only if we go back and try to interview the same people we did today,” he reasoned. “It’s gotta be someone we already talked to.”
“Unless Bishop figured out who we were,” I said.
Cole tapped his thigh with his keys and looked toward his black vintage Mustang. “He could’ve followed us back to the car and run my plates somehow.”
“But we didn’t even talk to him,” I said. “Why would he get suspicious?”
“We talked to Grady Weaver and Sara Radcliff. But no way did she have time to get over here and break in before us.”
“She could’ve called someone,” I said, looking around the yard. Dusk was already starting to settle, and the wind had picked up a little. Swaying trees were throwing long, creepy shadows, and I gave in to an involuntary shudder.
Cole swept a hand through his hair. “None of this makes any sense,” he said. “The more people we talk to, the more people we find out could’ve been the killer.”