I shuddered as horror washed over me.
“She’s been living in a house where someone else has been living?” I asked, almost out of disbelief than for the affirmation. “And she didn’t even know? Or suspect anything?”
“Yes,” he repeated. “Ask her yourself. See if you can find anything out without alerting her.”
I just shook my head.
“Is that all you found? What did you find?” I asked.
There was a long pause, then my father said, “I would’ve told you in a heartbeat before I found out you were with her. Now I’m not quite so sure that you should know all the details.”
That hung in the air for a few long seconds as we digested that little bit of knowledge.
Then I said, “Well, Dad, how do you expect me to protect her if I don’t know what’s going on?”
Silence.
“Signs that he’s been living there for a while. Found a city newspaper up there from a few months ago. A stockpile of food. Trash. Clothes. Not many, but enough that he can change his clothes. Size large shirts and thirty-two thirty-four pants. So we’re looking for someone quite skinny and about six foot.”
I swallowed hard as my father continued to speak, not realizing the turmoil that was rolling through me.
“He has a bank full of cameras set up in there,” he finally said. “But none of them are pointing at her house but two. One at the front entrance, and one at the back. I guess to make sure he knew when she was and wasn’t home.” He paused. “But, saying that, there are holes drilled into the floor, so if he wanted, he could look through those to watch whatever she was doing in there, but for some reason I doubt that he does that seeing as he could’ve just as easily set up a camera to make it where he didn’t have to lie on the floor to look.”
Like that made it any better.
My hand clenched, and I stared unseeing in front of me, thinking about what I knew about Jubilee’s house.
I’d been over there a handful of times, most of those times over the last week as I was helping install the security system and the cameras.
“There’s a ladder underneath the back deck that I believe he uses. It’s one of those collapsible ones like they use in cases of emergencies. One that you can fold out and fold back in at the drop of a hat,” he said. “Comes in and out easy as pie.”
“I heard Turner mention to Jubilee once that Jubilee’s place was haunted,” I said softly. “She said something about how her cell phone never worked when she went into the house. Maybe you should ask Turner.”
Dad made an approving sound in the back of his throat.
“I like that,” he muttered. “Plus, we can use Turner to help us keep her there while we do a little digging. We won’t be able to keep her there forever, but it could buy us just a few more days while we investigate further.”
I agreed with him on that.
But Jubilee wouldn’t stay away from her house or work for long. I’d give it another day and a half, max. Especially since she’d finished off the last dead person for her aunt about twenty minutes ago.
She was literally being brought over by her uncle as we spoke.
“I’ll figure something out,” I said, looking at Rome’s tattoo that I’d nearly completed over the last six hours.
Normally I would’ve broken this session up in sessions, but since we were leaving, and I knew Rome wouldn’t want to wait another six weeks for his arm to heal enough for me to finish it, I kept going even though my hand was numb from holding the tattoo gun for so long.
“Good,” Dad said. “I’ll let you know what Turner has to say.”
Then he was gone, and I was left staring at Rome’s arm as a drop of blood started to roll down his bicep.
“Well, shit,” Rome finally said, hanging up the phone for me.
I wiped up the drop of blood with the towel I had in my hand and nodded.
My stomach was in knots, and I wasn’t sure what to do about the feeling.
I wasn’t used to caring at all.
A text message came in before I could reply to him, and Rome held it out to me to see.
The screen unlocked when my eyes made contact with it, and the text message popped up, causing me to curse.
However, I knew that it could work.
“What does it say?” Rome asked, not caring whether it was private or not.
We were brothers, though not by blood. But blood didn’t make you family. How you treated each other did.
And Rome was my family, just like I was his.
“It says that I should take her home to Arkansas,” I said softly. “That her mother and mine will concoct a reason to go.”