“Everyone’s in, right?” the man left behind with Aly and Junior asked.

The guy in front of me responded in the affirmative.

“Then I’m kicking the power back on if everyone is ready,” came the reply.

We reached the top of the stairs and ducked low in case a nearby light sparked to life.

“Ready,” the leader said.

The other two-man teams chorused him, and all the machinery in the house beeped when the power returned. A soft glow illuminated us as a distant light lit up the downstairs, but thankfully, none close to us had been left on.

The leader turned to shoot me a look. He was a white guy of medium stature with hair that had turned mostly gray. Like Brad, he had one of those faces that would be hard to pick out of a crowd, and I bet his ability to blend in had made him an excellent soldier once upon a time. Maybe that was why he had such a chip on his shoulder – his military days were over, and civilian life didn’t suit him.

Our neck mics were powered by little battery packs attached to our toolbelts, and he reached down and killed his transmit switch. “We need to stay low.”

I cut mine off, too, and nodded. “I can do that.”

He eyed the way I was folded up like a pretzel, his gaze wary, obviously distrusting my abilities.

“I work legs twice a week,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

He snorted and flicked his mic back on. With a “follow me” gesture, he turned and started down the hall, knees bent, spine bowed so he could slip beneath the window sills.

I sighed, knowing my height was working against me, and followed after him, dropping to all fours whenever I reached a window and scuttle-butting past them like a Teen Wolf wannabe.

We scanned every room we came across, which was a lot. During our briefing earlier, Junior told us this was an eight-bedroom house complete with two home offices, a library, a study, and multiple bathrooms. There was even a wine-tasting room in the cellar, but when Aly asked if we could filch a couple of the good bottles since it wasn’t like Brad would miss them, she got a look of censure from her older cousin and a staunch no.

We found what looked like Brad’s office halfway down the hall. The guy with me closed the blinds and the door while I went to the computer. I was turning it on when the fourth problem struck.

“Uh, we got a situation down here,” someone said, and for the first time, the stone-cold façade they all shared sounded like it was cracking.

“What is it?” their leader asked.

“There are two huge piles of cat litter on the basement floor, and the smell is coming from them.”

“What the fuck?” Junior asked. “Does Brad have a tiger or something?”

“No,” I said. “The litter is meant to cover the smell of rotting bodies and absorb the decomp liquids.”

Only when the words were out did I realize I’d probably revealed too much about myself.

The leader craned his head toward me, frowning.

I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “I watch a lot of true crime documentaries.”

He eyed me for a long moment before speaking. “Everyone out.”

I frowned. “I just got the computer booted up.”

He jerked his head toward the door. “Out. Once the cops find those bodies, their warrant is going to shift from a simple search order to a top-to-bottom investigation. Every surface will get dusted. We can’t risk leaving anything behind.

“I just need five minutes,” I told him.

He shook his head. “We’re leaving. And if you’re smart, you’ll join us.”

With that, he slipped out the door.

Well, shit.

“Josh?” Aly said. “Are you going with them?”

I glanced from the door to the computer screen, ready for me to enter a password. My hair was covered with a baseball hat that sported the power company’s logo. The gloves I wore were leather, so there would be no prints or fibers from them to find. Our boots were from such a popular brand that there were probably thousands of people in the city who owned them, making them nearly impossible to trace.

The likelihood of getting caught was akin to being killed by a gopher: low, but never zero.

I took a deep breath. “I’m staying behind. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point when I can.”

“I’m staying with you,” Aly said.

There were so many shouted noes to that statement that I barely heard my own over them.

Aly’s voice came through clear as day afterward. “Don’t try to stop me.”

Her cousin wasn’t having it. “Dad will fucking kill me if I let you out of this van. Hey! Where do you think you’re – get back here!”

The sound of a scuffle came over the line, followed by a loud groan and then silence.

I was almost afraid to ask, but I forced the words out. “What just happened?”

“Your girlfriend,” Junior said in between wheezes, “just kicked me in the junk and ran off into the night.”

“Oh, so she’s your cousin when she’s being good and my girlfriend when she’s misbehaving? I see how it is.”

“Will you quit dicking around?” Junior snapped. “I’m guessing you have incoming.”

“We can intercept,” the lead man chimed in.

“Absolutely not,” I said, suddenly stone-cold serious. “If anyone so much as lays a finger on Aly, I’ll make all your lives a living hell. Don’t think I’m not capable of draining your bank accounts and putting illegal shit on your computers and phones.”

Was I happy with Aly right now? Fuck, no. But that didn’t mean I was okay with someone else restraining her.

“Do you understand?” I said, my voice so low with warning that I barely recognized it.

“Copy that,” the lead guy said.

“Junior?” I pushed.

“Yeah, fine,” he grumbled.

I let out a sigh of relief. “Was anyone able to locate Brad’s phone?”

The response was an immediate negative.

Fuck. There was no way I could leave without trying to find it. At least most of the hacking software I brought with me was automated. I could hit run on all the applications and search the house while they churned away.

“Aly, baby,” I said. “Can you wait for me in the shadows out back? I don’t want you entering the house since less of you is covered.”

Her sweet voice was a relief when it came over the line. “I can wait, but hurry up. It’s cold as shit out here.”

“I’ll hurry,” I told her.

“We’re leaving,” Junior said. “We’ll keep the watch cars in place and wait for you at the pickup spot. We won’t be able to hear you guys once we get out of range, so you’re on your own. Only use the burner phones as a last resort.”

“Got it, thanks,” I said. “I’ll work as fast as I can, Aly.”

“I know you will,” she said, the open trust in her voice spearing straight into my heart.

“I’m going to be quiet for a bit so I can get this done.”

Her tone turned saccharine-sweet. “How will I ever survive the silence?”

A snort-laugh came over the line, telling me the others were still in range.

I stiffened. “Please tell me that was Junior.”

“Nope,” he said. “I think that means you owe her twenty bucks.”

Aly let out a quiet whoop of victory.

I groaned and got to work.

The first thing I did was pull a thumb drive from my tool belt and pop it into a USB port. I’d loaded my favorite generative password-cracking AI on there, and it took less than ten seconds for it to log me into Brad’s system. Next, I opened a file that would scrape Brad’s entire web history, set the keywords to every variation of Aly’s name I could think of, along with her home address, and hit “run.” It didn’t matter if Brad had used Firefox or a stealth browser that promised it was untraceable. My crawl tool would find them all and mine them for the data I sought.

That done, I opened another handy piece of software that a hacker friend had created. He called it the Brick Layer, and no, I had never gotten him to explain the significance of that name.