Until May (Until Her/Him)

“I—” Her words are cut off when the doorbell rings, and I silently curse whoever is here, because I really fucking wish I knew what she was about to say. “That’s probably my uncle.” She ducks her head and starts for the hall.

Before she can get past me, I grab her wrist to stop her. “I’ll get it.”

“You’re the one who’s in danger,” she grumbles, walking with me, then she huffs when I place her behind me so I can open the door.

“I guess you’re the boyfriend,” a man around the age of her father, who—like her dad—is still good-looking and fit, greets, and I lift my chin. I look behind him to a guy wearing glasses, with longish hair that is tied back away from his scruffy face and he has a smile on his lips.

“Aiden, this is my dad’s cousin, Kenton, and his friend, Justin.” May steps in front of me to give them each a hug.

“Nice to meet you both.” I shake hands with the two of them as I let them into the house and then close the door.

“Do you mind if I have a look around?” Kenton asks, holding a strange-looking device in his right hand.

“Not at all,” May tells him, and he gives her a soft look before disappearing into her office.

“So someone put cameras up in your place?” Justin asks as May leads the way down the hall and into the kitchen.

“At least one.” She hands him the baggie with the smoke detector that was still on the counter. “That was in the bedroom.”

He flips it over in his hand, then looks between her and me before he takes a slim bag off his shoulder and pulls out a thin computer. “This camera is one you can get off any online retail site. It has a ten-hour battery life, and the memory card is the only way to download the information from it, unless it’s hooked up to Wi-Fi.” He starts to type away on his computer, then swings the screen around to face us. “These are all the devices that are connected to your Wi-Fi. Do you see anything on here that looks out of place?”

“No.” She looks at me, and I scan the list, then shake my head.

“They might have hooked it up to the Wi-Fi on their cell phone when they set it up.”

“If it only has ten hours of battery life, they would need to be in the house pretty often, right?” May asks, sounding freaked, and I grab her hand.

“It’s ten hours of recording time, and each recording only lasts about forty-five seconds.” He opens the baggie and carefully removes the SD card from the back of the smoke detector with the edge of his fingertips.

“You can’t watch what’s on that.” She tries to grab for it, but he pulls it back, out of reach.

“Relax, sweetheart. I’m just going to check the timestamps on the recordings and when the information was last downloaded from the card.”

“Oh.” She lets out a breath.

“The house is clean. I couldn’t find any other recording devices anywhere,” Kenton says as he joins us in the kitchen.

“Let’s see what information this gives us.” Justin puts the card into his computer, and a second later, hundreds of little boxes fill the screen.

“The last video was taken a week ago, and the last download was made two days after that.”

“So they were in the house less than a week ago?” My fingers flex as I bite back the urge to throw something.

“Not necessarily. They just needed to be close enough to connect it to the Wi-Fi signal on whatever device they hooked it up to,” Justin says, looking between us. “I noticed the cameras out front and the security system next to the door when we were coming in.”

“Yeah, I installed that a couple of weeks ago.”

“All right, open up the app and go back to that date. Let’s check the videos that were recorded that day,” he says, so I grab my phone and start going through the recordings for the day.

Most of them are cars driving by or kids playing outside. It isn’t until after the sun sets that a video comes up of a man—or a woman. It’s difficult to tell because of the hoodie and baggy clothes they have on. But the image is clear as they walk down the sidewalk in front of the house with their head down, then across the front lawn, and disappear out of view of the camera as they go around the side of the house.

“I didn’t put up a camera on the back corner of the house,” I mutter, pissed at myself for believing the cameras out front would be enough.

“The good news is they didn’t come into the house again.” Justin pats my arm. “And you also removed their ability to invade your life. The security system you have is one of the best, so as long as you make sure to set the alarm when you’re home and when you’re not, you should be okay. Now, the question is, who did this?” He pulls the SD card out of his computer and drops it into the plastic bag.

“I don’t know,” she tells him, then she explains about the dating app and everything that happened since she ended contact with whoever she was talking to. By the time she’s done, both men look equal parts pissed and concerned, and they vow to do everything they can to find out who she was talking to.

Between them looking into things and the detective on our case promising to have the smoke detector dusted for fingerprints, I should have felt better. But later that night, as I lay in the dark with May in my arms, I feel real fear for the first time in my life. Because without a doubt, the person out to harm me—their real obsession is May.