Page 84 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘Maybe she doesn’t like me much either.’ Sinking back to her normal voice, deep and ragged. ‘But there’s clearly something going on. Something secret she was doing in the house on Halloween, that she doesn’t want me or the police to know about.’

‘Connected to your attack?’ Billy chewed his lip.

‘Maybe.’

‘Oh,’ he said suddenly, eyes widening. Jet watched them in the darkened laptop screen. ‘Maybe she did forget something, but it wasn’t her phone. It was something she was supposed to do, to get ready.’

‘Like what?’ Jet held the reflection of his eyes. ‘Hide the hammer?’

‘No, I was thinking about the door. Wasn’t the back door unlocked? That’s how the police think the killer got inside. What if someone made sure it was unlocked earlier in the day?’ He stroked his fingers on the trackpad, awakening the laptop, pressing play. Sophia came back to life again, leavingthe Masons’ house without a glance at the camera, head down, eyes locked ahead, Cameron sucking on his pacifier.

‘For herself?’ Jet said, playing the scenario through in her head, reversing Sophia’s steps, rewinding her into the kitchen, then the laundry room, flipping the latch to unlock the back door.

‘Or someone else?’ Billy suggested with a shrug.

Jet wrinkled her nose. ‘Like a hit man? Do we even have hit men in Woodstock? Hit women. Hit people.’

‘I don’t think hit men use hammers,’ Billy said, backing down from the idea. ‘OK, let’s think this through. I know it’s the same day you were attacked, but could this just be a coincidence? I mean’ – he gestured to the screen again – ‘has she ever done something like this before? Bake cookies, drop them off when you and your parents are out?’

Jet leaned forward, dropped her chin into her left hand, finger to her temple, thinking back. Did thinking make her head hurt more? Did remembering? That constant ache, simmering away, like a little fire. But it wasn’t fire; it was blood, a slow leak.

‘Yeah,’ Jet sniffed. ‘Maybe she has.’ Definitely not the first time Sophia had baked; it had happened enough times to start to piss Jet off. But when? ‘I think she made a cake for Mom’s birthday. Yeah, she did. And she dropped it off during the day too. Said she didn’t want to bring it to the restaurant we were meeting at later. And it was a fucking carrot cake. Vegetables in cakes.’

‘When?’ Billy asked, finger on the trackpad, clicking back to the Ring dashboard.

‘August thirtieth, Mom’s birthday. Me and Mom and Dad were out during the day, visiting my aunt Laura. Came back to find the cake.Isn’t Sophia so thoughtful?’ Jet said, an impression of Mom now.

‘Does it save data from that far back?’ Billy checked the screen.

‘Yeah, goes back one hundred and eighty days. Let me.’ Jet shoved Billy out of the way with her elbow, her left hand to the trackpad, finding the correct date on the dashboard. ‘Here. This must be Sophia.’

She clicked on the video forMotion Detectedat 12:07 p.m. that day.

Blue Range Rover pulling up on the driveway, parking.

The car door opened and Sophia stepped out, headed toward the backseat. She pulled out a different baby. Cameron from two months ago, a quarter of his life stripped back, you could tell: the size of him, less hair, pinker-faced, Sophia not struggling so much as she balanced him in one arm and a frosted cake in the other. In a plastic-topped container.

She put the container down on the front step as she pulled a set of keys out of the pocket of her denim shorts. Opened the door, eyes meeting the camera for just a second, alighting on Billy and Jet two months in the future. She took the cake inside and shut the door.

Jet skipped to the nextMotion Detected, four minutes later: Sophia leaving, without the cake.

‘OK,’ Billy said. ‘And does she –’

‘– I think she does come back,’ Jet cut him off, clicking on the next video. ‘We didn’t get back till like four that day, and this is 1:33 p.m. Yeah, look, it’s her.’

The blue Range Rover pulled up again. The same routine, minus the cake. Sophia in and out with Cameron, only inside for three minutes.

Billy leaned even closer to the screen. ‘What the hell is she doing?’

‘Tell you what she’snotdoing,’ Jet answered. ‘She’snotforgetting her phone. Here.’ Jet reached for her notebookand the pen resting on top, passed them to Billy. ‘Can you write the dates and times down? I – I can’t anymore. Yeah, there’s good. No, neater than that, Billy. You write like a four-year-old.’

‘Any other time you can think of?’ He turned to her, pressed the pen to the corner of his mouth. ‘Any other baked goods that turned up when you were all out?’

‘Yeah, actually,’ Jet said, finger on the trackpad, finding the date just as she said it. ‘Fourth of July. My parents had a cookout in the yard that evening. I remember Sophia dropped off some cookies, little American flags. Would have been when we were out at the store, buying Woodstock out of burgers. Which was weird, because Luke and Sophia were coming to the cookout, so I remember thinking: why didn’t she just bring them then?’

Jet clicked play,Motion Detectedat 10:47 a.m. that day. ‘Oh, OK, this is us leaving,’ Jet said, watching her parents walk out the front door, Mom cupping her eyes against the morning summer sun, buds and flowers where there were none now.

‘Jet, hurry up!’ Mom called back into the house. ‘We have a lot to do today.’

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