Page 74 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

The cottage had aged in the past twenty years, the gutters broken and filled with leaves and debris, the one visible downspout broken but gurgling. The wood siding had never been painted and was dark with age, shingles on the roof patched in some places, missing in others.

Sitting in the car, staring at the decrepit old building, Nikki listened to the rain pound on the Honda’s roof and watched as it dappled the steely waters of the lake. With the gathering darkness, she thought today was much like the night Blondell had sworn she’d awakened to find a murderous stranger in the cabin.

You shouldn’t be here. Not alone. If this place isn’t dangerous physically, it is emotionally. Tread lightly.

Exhaling, she grabbed her camera and cell phone and stepped out of the car. Her boots sank deep into the mud. “Great. Just great.” After closing the door shut with her hip, she walked around the front of her car and stopped to take a few outside pictures of the cabin before the light faded completely. She doubted any of the shots she took would be used in the book, and they certainly would not appear in the paper, but she’d print them and tack them to the bulletin boards above her writing space to keep her focused as she put the chapters together.

She also took a picture of the lake, whitecaps brewing on the inky water, before heading up two rotting steps to the porch, where a screen door listed from one hinge.

Once again, a key from her uncle’s ring worked its magic, and with a click the old door creaked open and she stepped inside.

Morrisette pulled out of the drive-through window at the same moment Reed’s cell phone rang. He cleared the cup holder of trash and set his coffee in it before answering. “Reed.”

“Hey. Monty Hemler.” Hemler worked in the lab on the technical side, his specialty being electronic equipment. Tall and broad-shouldered, with oversized horn-rimmed glasses, Hemler, at around twenty-six, looked like Clark Kent in a lab coat. “I just checked out the little camera you brought in, and you’re right, it’s the type that’s used for surveillance; it can be bought online, and it isn’t cheap. I went out to the place you told me it was found, on the fence, there behind your house, and from what I can figure, the lens could have been tilted to view into your window, or more probably the French doors, but unless the lights were on, the view wouldn’t have been that

great.”

“How about looking into the apartment below us?”

“Possible, but I took the liberty of climbing the utility pole near the fence. It was clean, but about thirty feet up, a branch from one of your neighbor’s trees hangs over the fence. On that limb, taped down where the branches split, was a remote lens.”

“Meaning what?” Reed asked, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

“That whoever was spying could look right into your apartment.”

“Damn!” he spat out the word so hard that Morrisette, taking a swallow from her paper cup, peered over the rim at him. Her eyebrows raised in question as he said, “Any way you can find out who bought the camera? Or what’s on it?”

“Probably not what’s on it. The way it works is that the pictures or video are sent to a receiver. Whoever has the receiver sees the pictures, probably on his computer.”

“And can download them, or upload them, or whatever.”

“I’d say so. Yeah, probably.”

“Were there any prints on the lens or camera?”

“None on the lens, but some smudged ones on the camera, which I’m guessing are yours and your fiancée’s.”

“I’ll get you my prints and Nikki’s, in case you can get a clear print.”

“Okay,” he said dubiously.

“Can you track down the manufacturer, maybe a local outlet, so we find who bought it by its serial number?”

“Already on it.”

“Good. Let me know.” He remembered making love to Nikki on the floor of the apartment just the other night, their playful banter and hard sex. That sex-charged incident probably hadn’t been recorded—she’d already found the camera, and the remote lens would have needed it to record the images—but there had been other times as well. Many and just as carnal. Heat climbed up his neck. He was a deeply private man. His passions were no one’s business, especially not some sick voyeur who got off looking through keyholes.

Morrisette was driving slowly, for once staying within the speed limit, as she drank coffee and wended her way back to Roland Camp’s house.

“Can you spare a tech to sweep the apartment?” Reed asked Hemler as it suddenly hit him that if there was a camera outside the house there could be more spy equipment inside Nikki’s home. He conjured up an image of some pervert jacking off while drooling and watching Nikki and Reed in bed. They might have unwittingly created their own not-so-private sex tape. Or there might be film of Nikki undressing, or stepping into the shower . . . “Sweep the entire apartment,” he told Hemler as his mind spun out other private scenarios. Maybe the voyeur had gotten bolder, come inside and turned himself on while lying on Nikki’s bed, or fingered Nikki’s bras and teddies, maybe caressed her underwear and masturbated.

He’d been a cop long enough to have seen some sick things, so it wasn’t too hard to visualize what someone with a fascination for Nikki might do.

“I’ll let you know when I can get a couple of techs together,” Hemler was saying. “I’ll give you a call so that you can let us in.”

“Good. Thanks.” He hung up and saw the questions in his partner’s eyes. “Looks like someone’s been spying on Nikki. Maybe me too.” He quickly filled Morrisette in.

She whistled softly. “You don’t think this has anything to do with the fact that she’s writing a story on Blondell O’Henry.”

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