First Girl Gone(47)

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed.

They fell quiet. Charlie couldn’t pry her eyes away from the feed showing the blank slab of wall and a window in the master bedroom. After a second she noticed that shadows flitted against the wall, presumably from the doings on the bed.

“Just reading the shadows here, but if I’m not mistaken, is that reverse cowgirl I’m seeing?” Allie said, laughing to herself. “Go Sharon. For an older gal, I’m sort of impressed.”

Charlie closed her eyes, thankful to see the screen disappear for a second.

“Shut up. You can’t tell that.”

“Can if you use your eyeballs.”

When Charlie opened her eyes, the dark forms on the wall were still undulating, but she couldn’t make out anything in the shifting shapes.

She crunched another Dorito to distract herself.

“Wait. Wait a minute,” Allie said. “We’ve been sitting here the whole time, and this guy wasn’t at dinner, was he?”

Charlie pictured the table as it had been earlier.

“No. It was just the family. Todd, Sharon, Jason. And the chicken parm.”

“And we’ve been out here watching pretty much the whole time since then. Would’ve seen any cars parking, anyone going to the door.”

Charlie thought back. Not a single car had passed through the cul-de-sac loop since they’d been out here.

“Yeah. Right.”

“So how’d lover boy get in?”

Charlie’s thoughts stopped dead for a second. How did this guy get in?

“He would have had to sneak in somehow, to get past Todd. Probably a back door.”

“That would line up with my reverse cowgirl theory.”

Charlie didn’t take the bait this time.

“Either way, he would have had to come up to the house through the backyard on foot. Any other way, we would have seen him.”

“And you checked the whole house, essentially? Between going through the bedrooms and getting down to the basement, you got eyes on every room?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not impossible that he was hiding somewhere, but I kind of doubt it.”

“Besides, if he’d seen you planting the cameras, he probably wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing now, would he?”

They both stared at the shadows again.

She closed her eyes, felt the laptop radiate warmth against her legs. Not unpleasant on such a cold night.

“Question,” Allie said. “Do we think this guy, our Don Juan, could be in any way linked to Amber’s disappearance?”

Charlie opened her eyes. The shadow puppets on the wall seemed to have finally gone still.

“Maybe. With the infidelity, hiding it could be a motive.”

“Like if Amber found out about her mom and what’s-his-face.”

“Right. If he wanted to keep her quiet…”

“We’d still need to connect him to Kara Dawkins.”

“True.”

“Movement,” Allie said. “In the… which room is this?”

“The brother’s room.”

Charlie watched as Jason Spadafore’s stocky form paced across the room, something aggressive in his movements, in the set of his shoulders. And then he started screaming into the iPhone pressed to his ear.

Charlie turned the volume on her laptop up. There was music on in the background, loud enough that it was blowing out the crappy nanny cam mic.

There was a brief moment, between songs, when Charlie made out a snippet of the tirade.

“—a lying bitch—”

“Real smart setting up the camera right next to that speaker, dingus,” Allie said.

Charlie shushed her, leaning closer to the screen, as if that might make it easier to decipher Jason’s words, but all she could hear was more distorted gibberish from the speaker, throaty and strange. It almost sounded like a record playing backward.

Jason punctuated the end of his call by holding the phone out in front of his face like a rock singer’s microphone and screaming into it, something apelike about his body language, the arched upper back, the neck jutting out. Then he hurled the phone at the wall, where it splintered into pieces and sank to the floor.

“Someone’s in a bad mood,” Allie said.

“His sister is missing. I’m sure the whole family is a little tense.”

Amber’s brother stood over the broken gadget for a second, shoulders heaving, arms parted in some pose that made Charlie think of a professional wrestler. In one motion, he turned to his right and used both hands to sweep everything off the top of his dresser into a pile on the floor, yelling at no one.

“What next?” Allie asked. “Foot through the door? Blunt object through the TV screen? Haven’t seen that one in a while.”

Instead of committing further violence against the decor, Jason tugged on a hoodie and stormed out of the room. Charlie’s eyes scanned all the feeds, hoping to pick him up on one. Nothing.

Moments later, he burst out the front door, elbowed through the screen door, and stumbled down the front steps. He picked up speed, racing down the walk, through the gate, over the sidewalk into the street. He was headed right toward her car.

“Uh-oh,” Allie whispered. “Do you think he spotted the camera?”