Page 42 of Obsessive Love

"There's holding cells in there," he whispers. "I can't see into them, but I can see a guard walking back and forth in front of the bars, so we have to make sure we're completely silent. Otherwise, we're busted."

I nod and then allow Jaylen to grab onto my arm and lead me over to one of the other doors on the right side of the hallway. He hands me my phone and moves my fingers so that I'm partially covering the flashlight and then he aims it at the handle of the door.

Pulling his tools back out of his pocket, he crouches down and begins jimmying them into the lock until the door cracks open.

He pushes the door wider and pulls me inside, taking the phone off of me and shining it around as I quietly shut the door behind us.

"This is perfect!" he says, shining the light on the desk at the back of the room. He casts the torch around the rest of the room, showing a bookcase filled with folders, a drink-making section, and then another door, which I'm assuming leads into another room.

"Okay, you start by looking through the folders, just remember which one you're taking out and where it came from. We can't leave anything out of place," he whispers, rounding the desk and sitting in the leather chair behind it.

"What am I looking for exactly?"

"Uh, I don't know. You're the one who wanted to snoop around, Soph, so look for anything suspicious or anything that could explain why he keeps one side of his house locked up like Fort Knox. Considering his office is locked up, there's got to be something here."

I watch as he wiggles the mouse across the desk and then Jericho's laptop illuminates my cousin's face. He pulls a small USB from his pocket and plugs it into the side, then pushes away from the desk and walks over to me, pulling a folder off the shelf.

"Come on, Soph. I don't know how much longer we'll have to look through things," he says, taking the folder over to the desk and flipping through it.

I scan my eyes across the remaining folders on the shelf, and guilt begins to slither through my body.

"Maybe he's just a super private person," I say, turning to my cousin. "He might not have anything to hide at all." The conversation that I had with Jericho the other morning is at the forefront of my mind and the image of his usually stoic face looking so vulnerable as he spoke about his brother and the woman that he lost has my stomach in knots.

"Soph, everyone in our family is all about their privacy and security, yet they don't have half their house locked up," he states. "There has to be something that Jericho doesn't want us to know."

He examines my face and sighs, walking over to me.

"Look, that steel door blocking off this hallway is new. It hasn't been there for longer than a month, which leads me to believe that he put that in place after finding out that he would marry you and have to move you in here. Add in the fact that he tried to get out of marrying you and then requested for his brother to be a secondary bodyguard for you, makes this whole thing seems highly suspicious."

"I just feel guilty going through all of his things, especially if there isn't anything to find," I tell him, nibbling on my bottom lip.

He opens his mouth, about to reply, but a beeping sound echoes around the room and snatches his attention away from me.

"Shh," he hisses, hurrying over to the desk and pressing some buttons on the laptop until the sound stops.

We stand in silence, both staring at the door of the office, hoping and praying that the guard in the other room didn't hear anything.

After a few minutes of silence and no movement outside, Jaylen motions for me to move behind the desk with him.

"I'm in," he says, typing a bunch of numbers into the rectangular box on the screen.

I watch as the screen turns black and the loading symbol pops up. When the laptop loads, an image of a red-headed woman appears on the screen for a minute. Her shimmering green eyes stare straight at me, and a wide smile is painted on her face.

When another screen pops up in front of her face, loading four squares of CCTV footage, I realise that the image of the woman was Jericho's screensaver.

"Jaylen, I think we should stop this now and just lock everything back up," I tell him, walking away from the desk as it dawns on me that I've just stared into the eyes of Jericho's dead lover. Somehow, seeing her face and thinking over our conversation from the other day has me feeling like all of this snooping is wrong. "This doesn't feel right anymore. We need to go."

"Soph, you need to come look at this!" Jaylen hisses, leaning closer to the laptop.

"No. We need to leave," I say, walking towards the door as guilt consumes me.

"You seriously need to come look at this! We were right. They are hiding something."

His words make me pause and I turn around slowly to stare at him. He's watching the screen with wide eyes and a slack jaw as his hand moves on the mouse.

Curiosity overrides the feeling of guilt and I take a few steps towards him, wondering what he's looking at.

"Are you sure?" I ask, still looking for a way out.

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