Page 95 of Five for Silver

“That’s Graham, and the woman kneelingbeside him is Charlotte.”

“Pretty girl.”

“I know, right?” Josh snorted. “Her eyes areemerald-green—no—don’t distract me, I’ve got to focus. Where wasI?”

“Graham has disappeared without a trace,”Chad said.

“Yes,” Josh pointed at the folder he held inChad’s direction. “Vanished. So, I asked the neighbors, and one ofthem tells me someone was snooping around the area before he died.He saw this mystery person leave Graham’s property through the backdoor, but when he asked Graham about it, he hadn’t even knownsomeone had been in his house. He’d been out at the time.”

“Strange,” Chad murmured. “Did he reportthis mystery man?”

“No,” he shrugged. “I guess Graham hadn’tseen him for himself, and according to Charlotte he didn’t alwayssee eye to eye with his neighbor, but whatever. It’s strange, and afew days later, Graham vanishes.”

“No family he could’ve gone to?”

“Nope. He never remarried after his firstwife. His daughter, Amelia, moved to Canada, and his only closerelative is Charlotte, his granddaughter. She hasn’t heard fromhim. I started looking at other disappearances.” Josh set Graham’sfolder on the table. “And I found a pattern. Mystery guy lurking,breaking and entering, not taking anything. Dressed all in black,face covered, then … a few days later, a person vanishes.”

“Who has vanished?” Chad asked.

Josh pulled out three more folders. He heldup one. “Julius Tipper,” He slapped it down on the table, and heldup the next, “Ellie Burner.” It joined the other folders on thetable.

Chad hid his hands beneath a cushion.“Three.”

Josh hummed, “We’ll get to that.” He smiled.“They’re all missing people, so I started to look for CCTV. I’vebeen going through it every spare second I get, given up videogames and everything and I found something.”

He turned his back on Chad and arranged thefolders on the table. He pulled a page from each one, sorted themin a stack, then handed them over.

By some miracle, Chad didn’t drop them.

He looked through them all, keeping hisexpression neutral. They were printed out CCTV images of a car. Ablack Ford Focus with a dent in one side. It was old, twenty yearsold, and had been sent to the scrap heap to be destroyed.

Chad closed his eyes in a long blink.

It was his car, the one hidden in theouthouse. The one he had bought soon after they’d moved into thehouse for Romeo to use. The same one Chad used when he drove off inthe night to collect their victims.

Josh had found it.

“This car.” Josh said, glee shone in hiseyes. “It’s around every location the night they go missing. Thewindows have been blacked out, and I got Angel to run the plate andit’s fake. It’s a ghost car that doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Chad didn’t trust himself to speak. Hehanded the pages back.

“But that’s not the best part,” Josh beamed.He delved his hand back into his rucksack. “You know that creepybuilding Dr Carter owned where he was chopping up bodies?”

“How can I forget,” Chad deadpanned.

Josh retrieved yet another file. “This carwas captured on a dash cam parked up outside that place the daybefore Dr Carter went missing. It’s the same car.”

He handed over a sheet of grainy stills fromthe dash cam footage. Chad nodded. “Looks like the same car. What’syour theory? The car belongs to Dr Carter? He’s been kidnapping andkilling people?”

His heart thumped in his chest, but hedidn’t have time for subtly, if he could shift the blame onto DrCarter, he would.

Josh scrunched up his nose. “At first, Ithought it might be something like that, Dr Carter beingresponsible, but then I asked Angel for help finding the car.”

“Is that how you two started … foolingaround?”

“Yes, butshhh, I’m on a roll, don’tdistract me. I told her about the car, and the distinctive dent inthe side, and she recognized it from a few years back.”

“Recognized it?”

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