Page 53 of Winters Heat

Parker’s fingers flew over his keyboard. Without stopping, he’d occasionally asked Winters a question. With a few flashes of pixilated grains, several of the security cameras in his home now broadcasted on monitors in front of the men. Parker flashed through several feeds and stopped.

The feed was clear as if he stood in the room. The kitchen was empty. A coffee mug shattered on the hardwood floor in the kitchen, coffee splattered. Parker skipped through other camera angles. Nothing was out of the ordinary in the living room or hallways or nursery.

“Parker, I have a camera pointed into the crib. It’s in the corner. Get that shot.”

Parker clacked on the keyboard. Winters’s stomach ached worse with each loud stroke, until one screen blinked, showed snow, then an empty crib.

“Fuck!”

Winters dialed his mother. She picked up on the second ring. Without giving her the chance to say hello, he said, “Do you have Clara?”

“What? No, she’s at home with Mia. You said—”

Winters clicked the phone off. He summoned all of his training, and all but ordered Parker to queue back the footage. Parker worked. Winters paced. The live images halted, then skipped backward in sixty-second increments.

“Keep going.”

“Dude, I’m working on it.”

The screen skipped backward in two-minute increments. A blur of activity flashed and Parker hit stop. The image was clear. Mia was at the table with a cup of coffee in one hand, a sleeping baby in the other arm, and a half-empty bottle on the table.

“Make it play right now.” Jared wasn’t interfering in Winters’s orders to Parker. None of the men interrupted. Winters’s lungs ached. His body warped into warrior mode and ignored the terrifying paralysis edging at his mind.

Every pair of eyes watched as Mia turned to the kitchen window. Her face pinched in surprise. Her mug fell and shattered. The baby startled awake. Mia grabbed the bottle, stuck it in Clara’s mouth, and the panicked look on her face made him ill. A heartbeat later, Mia took off at a run out of the kitchen.

Parker’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and Winters yelled at him. “Find her. Where did they go?”

“Looking.”

“Look faster.”

Black flooded the screen. The motion detector lights flicked on as Mia and Clara rushed through a door. Parker switched the footage to the large flat screen in the center of the room. No one breathed. They watched Mia finger the keys on the pegboard wall. She selected a set and stretched out her arm. His Hummer’s lights flashed as it unlocked, and she ran to the vehicle’s backdoor. She jumped in with Clara but came out alone. She ran to the driver’s door, cracked the tinted windows, ran back around, and to peek in the backseat at the baby.

“What the fuck is she doing?” Jared asked. Mia swiveled her head, a terrified expression plastered on her face. “Is she leaving?”

No one moved. Everyone watched. She flew back toward the house and manually turned off the lights.

“What did she do with Clara?” Jared was pissed.

“Car seat.” Winters mumbled.

“Car seat?”

“Yeah, asshole. She just rat holed my kid.”

Every guy in the room gave a collective oh.

Winters interrupted the stunned mumblings. “Can you get me a shot of what she saw outside?”

He needed to be there but was too far away. He couldn’t get home. Whatever they watched was History Channel by now. Nothing was worse. His head spun.

“Working on it,” Parker muttered. “Until I find that camera feed, keep watching this.”

It played in time and a half. Mia ran through several of the shots. The kitchen. The hallway. Up the stairs and toward the master bedroom.

“Has this woman gone mad?” Jared asked.

“Damn, boy.” Parker directed them to a different monitor in the corner. Parker rewound the screen, then hit play. A chopper landed several hundred feet from his house. That explains the perimeter alarm.

---