Page 20 of Unraveling Connections

Luc nods, “Yeah, I had to; otherwise, he would know that I knew far more about his business than he thought I did.”

“Awesome,” Pete replies with a grin and then frowns, “Not that your father was a raging douche canoe, but that you deleted stuff. I am presuming you know if there are changes to the original footage that would give away that it has been altered?”

“Yeah, it’s subtle as shit, but if you know what you’re looking for, then you can tell,” Luc replies.

“Are you thinking that the footage has been tampered with?” Riot asks.

Peter nods, “It definitely has. There was another person that was in the house, we have no idea how long he was there for, but it could have been ever since we found the first guy in the house.”

“There was someone else there, while we were there?” Cash asks, a heavy frown on his face, he absolutely does not like that we made an oversight.

“There’s a possibility that there was, yes,” Peter replies.

“We went through the cameras when we followed your mom through the house, but we didn’t go through all of them. If the person was already in the house before the outside cameras were set up, then it is possible that they knew your mother was coming and then disabled them for her.” Jensen starts to explain.

“They can’t have known that though because otherwise they wouldn’t have been surprised when she went into the safe room,” I point out.

“Shit, you’re right,” Jensen replies, “which means the person disabled the cameras outside and most likely knew they were there because they watched Alaric set them up.”

“So, what we need to do is go through the footage properly, then?” Trick questions.

“That’s the plan. At least we now don’t have to go back to the beginning.” Pete replies.

“Erm, I hate to burst your bubble, but it would probably still be a good idea to go back to when the first guy entered the house,” Rafe suggests, “that way we will know for certain if he came with anyone else, and if they got away when we found the first guy. I mean, it is the second time that the cameras have gone down. The original cameras that were set up went down a couple of hours before we got to the house, and headquarters just thought that it was us. That’s why Alaric had to go back and set up more.”

“I don’t know how I forgot about that,” I reply with a frown.

“A lot has happened in a short space of time, and Luc deciding he needed an extended cat nap was not something that we prepared for,” Atlas replies, being serious and yet teasing Luc at the same time.

“Yeah, that’s true.” I reply, “We checked the outside though and there was no sign of anyone else.”

“What if the guy that we caught, the one that was pretty fucking chatty and we thought was unprofessional, was actually a decoy?” Rage suggests.

“Fuck, you may be right.” Trick replies, “Distract us and give us just enough information to keep us happy while someone else has enough time to hide in the safe room that we didn’t know about.”

“They would have to know the house better than Luc did. Which means they would have to have direct knowledge from either his mom or dad,” Cash points out.

“He got the information from his mom,” Pete replies, and then turns the laptop to face the majority of us while the rest move so that they can see the screen, “just watch.”

Everyone surprisingly stays silent as the video plays. Peter does not waste any time and quickly switches it over to the video feed that is inside the safe room.

He pauses it as Luc says, “I have been through those cameras so many times, and I never knew that there was a camera there. I didn’t know that there was a room, so I didn’t know to look but every now and then, I went through every single camera just to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything. Not once did I find that camera.”

Pete shakes his head, “You wouldn’t have. It wasn’t easy to find. Even if you knew security systems really well, you still wouldn't have been able to find the camera; it was hidden pretty sophisticatedly and password protected.”

“Really?” I ask. “You got into it really quickly.”

“Why thank you,” he replies proudly.

“There’s clearly a lot that I didn’t know about my parents,” Luc frowns.

Jensen claps him on the shoulder, “You knew enough about them. We also had our own shit going on, and don’t forget the way he treated you. You found out as much as you safely could. He could have decided that you were a serious threat and done something else about it.”

Chapter Seven

Ever

“He would’ve killed me,” Luc replies blandly.

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