By Hook or by Wolf

“The police officer didn’t close it,” Cody says.

“He was here, though,” Trevor points at the man’s footprints. “That much is for certain.”

“He got his scent everywhere,” I say. Even if we hopped out of the window and tried to figure out where the little thief went, something tells me that we would have a really hard time tracking her.

Damn.

“So she came in through the window,” Trevor says, scratching his chin. “Then what?”

Perplexed, we once again walk through the halls of the gallery we once spent so much time in. We explore the places our little thief may have wandered. We go back through the ballroom and then to the lobby once more, but there’s nothing missing.

She didn’t take anything.

“Wait a moment,” Cody says. His eyes narrow. “We’ve been walking through here for what? Half an hour? I get that the alarms are shut off, but they weren’t last night. How could someone make it through all of this without the heartrate detectors going off?”

We have a unique set of alarms that go off when someone’s heartrate is too fast. We only installed it after my father passed away and we closed the gallery down. The alarms are designed to ensure that nothing living passes through the gallery. It’s not an exact science as far as alarm systems go. Sometimes a wind or breeze will set off the motion detectors which is why we adjusted our alarms to detect heartrates.

/> Only, I can tell that my heartrate is through the fucking roof.

I’m pissed I came here.

I’m not a fan of missing work and I’m not a fan of raising the dead. Instead of immersing myself in business possibilities, I’m stuck in a gallery full of lost memories. My father loved this place and I loved spending time with him here.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I never turn them off. The place was definitely secured last night.”

Cody works with me in real estate, but Trevor left after dad died. He works at an elementary school. He says that kids are full of life in ways adults aren’t. I think part of him misses the relationship we had with our dad, too. None of us have mates or kids, so being a teacher lets him spend time around families who are happy and around kids who need him.

“Then why didn’t they go off?”

With a sigh, I realize that if the alarms are not working, they might actually be malfunctioning. Getting them back up and running won’t be easy. I sell houses and businesses. I’m not a tech expert. Cody is pretty good, but I realize that we’re going to have to call in a professional who can work on our alarm system. Great.

“Guess I’ll make some calls,” I say, pulling out my phone, but then something catches my eye: something I didn’t notice before. “Did you walk over there?” I motion to the side door: the one that leads to the basement.

“Uh, negative,” Cody says, eyeing the door. The dust that coats the gallery is really out of control. Note to self: hire a cleaning team. This is totally unacceptable, even for an abandoned building. There’s a space where the dust is pushed back, as though the door has been opened recently.

“Son of a bitch,” I say, marching over. I yank the unlocked door open and the scent of vanilla wafts over me. “Boys, I know what she was after.” Then I go downstairs.

Chapter Three

Cody

Lee doesn’t always have the best self-control. His temper tends to be a little wild and run a little hot, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about this. No matter what we’re facing, one thing is for certain: it’s a female thief that we’re dealing with. When Lee noticed the door to the basement had been opened, we all knew exactly what the woman had been after.

The jewels.

We keep them locked in the basement because it’s the safest place for them. A series of heartrate detection monitors keep both thieves and stray animals out of this area.

Not anymore, apparently.

As we noticed upstairs, the alarms down here have all been turned off. I shouldn’t have been able to make it halfway through the hall without receiving an alert on my phone about an intruder.

I glance at it, anyway.

No alert from last night.

As the police officer said, the alarm system was shut down after he received his report. I can see now that it’s been shut off for about two hours. That’s not a terribly long time. As far as I can tell, though, the system was working fine until the cop’s phone call.

So how did someone make it all the way down here?