Talia eased the door open and listened. When there was no sound, she opened it a little further and stuck her head out. The door opened into a sitting room. It was dark. She looked around. Security cameras. She cursed.
"Jigsaw. I need a little help. He has cameras everywhere," Talia whispered.
"I can't do anything about that remotely."
"You need to work on your skills."
"It's not my fault most people don't connect their security system to the internet. That would make things so much easier for me."
Talia closed the door. "What do I do then?"
"I don't know."
"I wasn't asking you. I was thinking out loud." Talia opened the drawers of the dresser and bedside tables to find anything useful. The room definitely hadn't been used in years. The Bible in the drawer was covered in dust.
"Who are we looking for?" Jigsaw asked.
"You know him by the name Cypher."
"Cypher! We're helping Cypher?"
"Keep it down. I need to think." Talia opened the closet. There were new bedsheets in there. "Perfect," she said. She pulled one down.
"What are you planning?" Jigsaw asked.
"Anyone looking at the security feed will be able to see me. I'm going to make them wonder what it is they're seeing." She wrapped the sheet around her.
"What about when you were outside?"
"My clothes are dark and I stayed in the shadows they wouldn't have been able to see me clearly. It doesn't matter if they see me or not, once they don't notice until after I have Nicolai and we're gone. With the sheet, they won't be able to identify me or my school. With any luck, they'd think I'm a ghost and leave me alone."
"I just hope you know what you're doing," Jigsaw said.
"You and me both. Have 911 ready in case something goes wrong."
Talia darted out of the room and ducked behind a couch. She peeked out at the camera, making sure that the sheet obscured her face.
"Do you have a usb cable with you?" Jigsaw asked.
"Why would I be carrying that around in my pockets?"
"Who doesn't?" Jigsaw asked.
"Normal people."
"Anyway, try to find one and see if you can pull it into one of the cameras."
Talia crept around the couch until she was next to the entertainment system. She opened the cabinet.
"Got the cable," she said.
"Plug it into one of the cameras."
"What about the entertainment system? These new TVs have web cams."
"Well, you can do that too. Those should already be connected to the internet."
Talia plugged the cable into her phone and then into the server connected to the TV. She pressed the on button. It barely made any sound when it came on.
"How's that?" she asked.
"Give me a second... Got it."
"Can you see where Nicolai is?" Talia asked.
"No. But I can see where he isn't. None of the TVs in the bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, dens or any of those show anyone at the moment."
"So he might be in an office or supply closet," Talia said. She unplugged her phone.
"Why do you rich people have such big houses? It must cost a fortune to clean. The housekeepers must be exhausted."
"That's precisely why we don't have a big house."
Talia looked around. There were two exits from the living room where she was, one going to the kitchen and the other into a hallway with stairs at the end. She picked that way.
She couldn't see any lights underneath the doors or hear any noises but she had to check just to make sure.
She stayed in the shadows as well as she could and made her way to the kitchen. There was another corridor.
Talia decided to search downstairs first. There was no one in the game room or in the library or in the other three guest rooms. She'd been keeping a mental note of the sizes of each of the rooms and so far she hadn't noticed any space problems that would suggest there was a hidden room.
She opened the door at the very end of the corridor. Stairs led down. She used the flashlight of her phone to peer into the basement. There were some boxes and old furniture. there wasn't much dust and judging by the shelves of tinned food and the large freezer, either the family ate a lot or the basement was storage in case of some disaster. She needed to have a talk with her parents about doing that in their own house.
She heard footsteps. She turned off the flashlight and stood on the stairs. She closed the door to the basement and waited. More footsteps came towards the door. She held her breath. She heard another door open and then the footsteps disappeared. She waited a few more minutes.
"You're clear," Jigsaw said.
"You should have warned me," Talia said.
"I just got eyes in the house. I'm not psychic."
Talia ran back to the living room and up the stairs, making sure the sheet was securely around her in case someone was looking at the cameras. She ducked behind an absurdly large plant. She could see lights underneath three of the doors and a camera at the end of the hall. Behind one of those doors was Nicolai. She had to risk it.
Talia ran to the first door and listened. She heard a child's voice. Not the room she was looking for.
There was no sound coming from the next room. She heard the door open from the first room. She didn't have time to make sure the second room was empty. She opened it and went inside.
She was standing in a bedroom. She could hear the shower running in the bathroom and two voices coming from inside. She held her breath. This situation was just getting more and more uncomfortable.
The woman on the inside let out a high pitched squeal then giggled and Talia thought she was going to die from an embarrassment induced heart attack. Imagine that on a headstone.
She could feel a slight headache coming on and sweat ran down her back.
She spotted a wallet and a notebook on the table near the bed. She glanced at the door to the bathroom then went over. She opened the wallet. Kris Wright. Craig Rogers son-in-law. She opened the notebook and flipped through the pages. His handwriting was hard to read and she wasn't sure what half of it meant.
She heard a moan from the shower and dropped the book.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it.
She retrieved the book from where it had fallen underneath the bed, took out her phone and took a few quick pictures.
The shower turned off.
Talia ran as quietly as she could to the door. She opened it a little just to make sure no one was in the hall and closed the door behind her just as the bathroom door opened. Her heart pounded. She was going to spend the next few hours trying to forget what she had just walked into.
Talia turned her attention to the third door. She crept towards it and pressed her ear to the door. She could hear voices inside.
"I'm telling you, a man asked me to get that and said he would pay me a hundred dollars for it." That was Nicolai's voice. He sounded scared, not hurt. If she didn't know any better she would have believed what he'd just said.
"You expect me to believe that?" Rogers asked. "You were at the museum too."
"It's the truth. Put a rolled up canvas in the museum behind the statue then retrieve an envelope from the playground at the park. He must have known you were waiting for him. I didn't do anything."
Nicolai was an amazing liar.
Talia went further down the hall and into what she discovered to be a linen closet.
"Jigsaw. I need a distraction," she said.
"Coming right up. You got to love modern technology and people's laziness. The ability to control everything from my bedroom? Yes please."
There were a few more seconds of silence then everything came on. Talia covered her ears. It was loud even in the linen closet.
"Daddy!" someone yelled.
Talia opened the door just a crack. Craig Rogers came out of the office and both of the men he'd been inside with.
"Go back and check the cameras. Make sure no one is in here," Craig said. "You, go down and turn off that blasted music. I'll take care of everything up here."
"Daddy!"
"Coming pumpkin," he said.
Talia waited until they were both out of sight. The other man would be checking the cameras. She didn't have time for subtlety. She felt around in the closet until her hand closed around a wooden broom handle. She tied the sheet securely around her, unscrewed the handle, took a deep breath, then left the closet and headed straight for the third room where she'd heard Nicolai's voice. She didn't know what she was going to do with it but she had to get Nicolai out of that room.
She threw open the door and burst inside.