Save Your Breath (Morgan Dane #6)(26)

Lance walked to the panel. “Her alarm is outdated.”

“And she doesn’t have motion detectors or cameras.” Sharp could kick himself. He should have insisted on updating her system. “I didn’t see any sign that the alarm system was hacked, but I can’t rule it out. Everything that operates on Wi-Fi is vulnerable to hacking.”

Lance turned away from the alarm panel. “Let’s walk through the house assuming her security system was compromised and her house breached. Then she was kidnapped.”

Sharp went down a short hallway to the bedroom. Lance and Morgan followed him.

Sharp stood in the doorway and stared at the covers spilling onto the floor. He imagined what could have happened. “He surprised her while she was sleeping.”

“Wearing a Halloween mask.” Morgan shivered, rubbing her arms.

Sharp remembered a night three months back when he and Olivia had gotten themselves into a jam with two goons. She’d fought hard, scratching and clawing for her freedom. She was tough.

“Olivia would not have gone quietly. She would have put up a fight.” Sharp pictured the events unfolding in front of him. “She would have gone for his face with her nails.”

“But he was wearing a mask,” Lance added. “Which she tore.”

“He overpowered her, restrained her, or pulled a weapon.” Sharp imagined a masked man dragging Olivia from her bed, the covers being pulled off the mattress along with her body. “And forced or carried her to the garage.”

They retraced their steps to the kitchen.

“Her purse would have been on the island.” Sharp pointed. “So the intruder would have her phone, the security system fob, and her car keys. He could have turned her alarm system on and off easily using either the fob or the app on her phone.”

They walked to the short hallway that led to the laundry room.

“He exited through the garage.” Sharp stared at the wood trim. Stella had taken the broken fingernail and sampled the blood, but the smear was still visible. “She grabbed the doorjamb on the way out.”

“If she had broken away right here”—Morgan opened the door and stood in the doorway—“then she could have closed and locked the door with him on the garage side.” To demonstrate, she motioned for Lance to walk down the two wooden steps to the concrete floor while she stayed in the laundry room.

“But that didn’t happen”—Lance walked farther into the garage—“because he put her in the back of her car.”

“Her car is a hatchback. It doesn’t have a trunk.” Sharp walked to where Olivia’s Prius was usually parked. “He would have had to incapacitate her in some way.”

“He clearly planned this down to the smallest detail,” Morgan said. “He would have brought something to restrain her. Rope. Zip ties.”

Or used drugs, a Taser, or a blunt instrument to render her defenseless.

Sharp’s mind jumped in with other possibilities. He stared at the two yellow sticky notes that marked the locations of Olivia’s fallen earrings, and he knew.

How did he not see it the first time he’d walked the scene?

She was clever, clearly smarter than Sharp, and she would never give up.

“She left us a trail.” His gaze locked on the empty concrete. Trying to absorb the scene playing out in his mind, Sharp rubbed his scalp with both hands. “I should have known. I should have assumed she’d been kidnapped.”

He’d let her down already.

“Sharp.” Morgan’s voice was clipped. “You had no way of knowing. Now let’s start looking in her office for a motive.”

“Right.” Sharp nodded. Back to work.

“She keeps her calendar and contact information on her phone, which is missing, but it syncs with her computer. She keeps her laptop on her desk.” Sharp turned and led the way back through the house to Olivia’s office. He flipped the wall switch, and light brightened the room. A built-in desk and bookshelves lined the walls.

“I should be able to break into her laptop,” Lance offered. “I’ll have to hack around her screen passcode, but it’s not hard.”

Sharp gestured toward the desk, and Lance took the chair behind it. He opened the laptop and went to work. In less than two minutes, he bypassed the opening-screen password.

“I’m in.” Lance looked up.

Morgan walked toward the shelves and began scanning them. Olivia had research books on every aspect of the criminal justice system, from police procedure to criminal defense. “We need to know which cases she was researching.” She stopped at a row of binders. “Is all Olivia’s research on her laptop, or does she keep written notes as well?”

“Both.” Sharp leaned over Lance’s shoulder. “She transcribes her interviews and notes onto the computer, but she keeps the originals. She organizes everything in those binders in some sort of elaborate system.” Sharp remembered seeing a black and a red binder on Olivia’s desk earlier in the week. He spotted the two binders lying on their sides on the shelf over the desk. He picked up the first one and opened it, scanning the page. “Olivia was researching the case of Cliff Franklin, who was convicted of murder in 2016.”

Lance looked up. “I see two recently accessed folders on her computer. One is entitled ‘Franklin Case.’ You’re never going to guess the name of the second case.”