Page 45 of Deception and New Direction

She rolled her eyes, butIsaw her lip twitch. “Whatever.”

We made it to her apartment building, and she navigated the stairs with only a few minor missteps.Wegot to the top of the steps, and she fumbled with her keys.Ihadn’t noticed until that moment that she had a shit ton of them.

“Why do you have so many keys?”Iasked her.

She looked up at me. “Everyonegave me a spare just in case.Ellie,Val,Archer,Granddad, yours, andIhave the three different ones for the office.”

She finally found hers and stuck it in and then stopped.

“Jack.”Thealertness in her voice got my attention.

“What?”

“It’s not locked, andIknow we locked it.”

I put my hand over hers, which was still holding the key in the doorknob, and moved to slide her behind me.Myown hand grabbed the handle and slowly turned it, noticing that it rotated with ease.

I removed the keys and handed them to her. “Useyour key toArcher’splace and let yourself in,”Ispoke quietly to her. “Callhim as soon as you get in there.Now.”

I pushed her back toward the other side of the hall whereArcher’sunit was then reached for the gun in the holster at my waist.Iwaited until she was inside, then slowly opened the door to her place.

First glance showed the place was trashed.Herwhole place was flipped, broken, and rooted through.Knowingshe was likely already on the phone withArcher,Iused my phone to call the cops.Iwasn’t sure if anything was stolen or not, but she would need a police report in case anything was.

Not wanting to contaminate anything from the crime scene,Ileft and closed the door, walking over toArcher’sapartment.Iwent to knock, butRuthieopened the door.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, andIcould hear the worry in her voice.

I did not want to have this conversation with her, especially knowing she was having a good day.

“Someone broke into your place,”Itold her and watched her face fall.

“Oh shit.”Hervoice was just slightly more than a breath.

I knew she must have been really rattled to not have come up with some quippy, non-swearing, response.

“How bad is it?” she asked, somberly, but to the point.

“The place is tossed.Icalled the cops and they’ll be here soon.We’llgo over and see if anything was stolen once they arrive.”

“Okay,” she said sullenly. “IcalledArcher, and he’s on his way too.”

Usually, the cops had other priorities and did not respond quickly to these sorts of calls, but since we worked with law enforcement regularly in our job, we had made some good friends, and they were more than willing to push this up the priority list.

Once they arrived and scanned the place, taking pictures of everything, we let them know aboutRuthie’sdad and potential stalkerMal.Whilehighly unlikelyMalwas directly involved due to him still being in prison, it wasn’t out of the question for him to have a hand in this in some external capacity, especially with the flower incident several weeks ago.

Archer showed up to let everyone know he had gone through the limited security camera footage he had access to.Ruthiehad one of those camera doorbells outside her unit, but they had their flaws.

It would have been great to have more, but the apartment complex hadn’t wanted tenants todefacetheir exterior property, so all she had was the doorbell camera.Ithad indeed captured the break-in but hadn’t tripped early enough, so there was no way to see the person’s face.

The man on the camera looked heavier set, and he definitely wasn’t a pro at this since it took him a few tries.Hehad a black hoodie and had come in at night.Whenhe left, he kept his face down and carried nothing with him, at least nothing large enough to carry in his arms.

“Son of a biscuit eater!”Ruthiegrumbled as we watched the video playback.

Apparently, this had happened the night before, and no one had noticed.Archer’scamera had detected movement as well, but it was always doing that, given the location of their apartments.ArcherandRuthiewere the first two apartments in a total of six on their floor.So, if you came up the main stairwell, you had to walk by both of their apartments in order to get to the others, which were all occupied.Soevery tenant, friend, and food delivery person who stopped by was constantly triggering the camera notification.

“What a satchel ofRichardsthis day has turned out to be,”Ruthiegroaned.

“What did you just say?”Archerasked at her weird comment.

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