Chapter 4 - THE BACKPACK
I nearly drove home.
Matt physically blocked the garage door.
“No.”
“He has Sophie’s backpack.”
“Which means he wants you angry.”
“That’s my daughter’s house.”
“And she isn’t there.”
I hated that he was right.
We called the police.
Officers surrounded my property while I watched remotely through the cameras.
The intruder moved slowly.
He never rushed.
He opened drawers.
Walked through the living room.
Entered my office.
Then he disappeared from camera view for ninety seconds.
When officers finally entered, he was gone.
No broken windows.
No forced doors.
Nothing obviously stolen.
Except the backpack.
Detective Melissa Grant arrived at Matt’s house after midnight.
She was in her early forties, calm, direct, and unimpressed by drama.
“Start at the wedding,” she said.
I did.
Sophie slept upstairs while I explained everything.
When I finished, Grant put on gloves and examined Amanda’s phone.
“How did your daughter get this?”
“It was under a chair outside the bridal suite.”
“Sophie said Amanda dropped it?”
“No. Sophie said she saw Amanda hide it.”
Grant looked at me.
“That matters.”
“How?”
“If Amanda deliberately concealed it, your daughter may have seen behavior Amanda didn’t expect anyone to notice.”
Grant opened the messages.
“What is Marcus’s last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“We identified the man at the hotel. Marcus Bell.”
“Criminal record?”
“Fraud. Identity theft. Wire fraud. Two convictions.”
My stomach dropped.
“And Amanda knows him.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We’re finding out.”
Grant looked at the recording.
“Your daughter heard this herself?”
“She played it from the phone.”
Grant’s expression softened for the first time.
“Don’t question Sophie about it repeatedly. Children can get confused when adults keep asking them to remember frightening events.”
I nodded.
“What should I do?”
“Make her feel safe.”
That hit harder than anything else.
Because I had almost married the person who had frightened her.
Grant continued scrolling.
Then stopped.
“What?”
She turned the screen toward me.
A photo showed my bedroom.
Not from a real estate listing.
Not from anything I had posted online.
It had been taken from inside the room.
Amanda had photographed my nightstand.
The open drawer.
My passport.
My checkbook.
And my mother’s old safe key.
I stared at it.
“When was that taken?”
Grant checked the metadata.
“Seven months ago.”
I felt cold.
Amanda had moved into my house only four months earlier.
“She wasn’t living with me then.”
Grant looked at me.
“Did she ever have a key?”
I thought back.
Seven months ago, Amanda had fed our dog one weekend while Sophie and I visited Matt.
I had given her a temporary keypad code.
Grant zoomed in.
Something else was visible in the bedroom mirror.
A figure.
A man standing behind Amanda.
Marcus.
Then Grant swiped to the next picture.
It was a photograph of me asleep in my bed.
May you like
Taken from six feet away.
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