Chapter 123: Chapter-123. (For Us).
Dave’s Pov:
"How many?" Samantha asked, her voice clipped and sharp, as anticipation seared through me.
"Two. One adult and one child, " Jessica said.
Maximus then let out a slow breath. "So, he is lying about the river thing."
His hand swiftly went to the radio, as he commanded, his tone cut and clear, "All units, sweep the property. Check the garage, the river’s edge, perimeter. Bring in the forensics kit and sweep for accelerants."
Then his gaze met with Samantha, as he continued, "You and I will go in with another two of our men, east side first."
Then he looked at me, putting his hand on my shoulder, "Dave, stay with Jessica. Though my people got Josh, there could be others hiding in. So, stay alert." Saying those last words, he pointed towards the taser, which was still in my hand.
My hand tightened on the taser as I curtly nodded at him without getting into an argument with him this time. I knew the culprit was caught.
Though my feet itched to run into that house and tear it apart with my hands, I knew that I had to stay calm to think ahead. Samantha saw the look and set her palm on my shoulder. It was not rough.
While Maximus and Samantha swiftly moved into the house with guns in their hands, with two of their people. I headed towards their. There she sat, Jessica, in her back seat with all the devices around her.
A laptop, a couple of phones, a tablet, and a tangle of wires. The air smelled of wet earth and cold metal now.
My heart was still hammering from the fight. From all the confrontation, but I needed to stay strong.
For her.
For us.
The taser felt heavy and useless in my hand, but Max had told me to keep it, and my eyes kept roaming around the outskirts of that place.
Even a moving shadow caught my eye, but then I realized that it was just some branch moving in the wind.
The chaos around us felt less chaotic to my inner turmoil. I felt too overwhelmed with all the thoughts. Especially the negative one. So, I diverted my attention to Jessica.
Jessica’s fingers moved fast across the keyboard. Her screen was a grid of windows.
Grainy camera feeds, timestamps, motion logs. She didn’t waste any time as she spat out. "I found more hidden cameras. Different angles in each room." It felt more like she was talking to herself instead of speaking through her headset.
I blinked, as confusion and realization hit me at the same time, "Hidden?" My voice echoed in my head, sounding almost impossible to believe, because the thought didn’t make sense at all.
This place was supposed to be abandoned. Broken windows, a sagging porch, weeds taller than the fence. I expected anything but a f***ing surveillance hub.
She then pointed at the screen, making me snap out of my thoughts, "Look."
She enlarged one feed. The camera was mounted high in a corner, angled down toward the center of a living room.
Another feed showed the kitchen from the ceiling. A third fed from a small angle that seemed to watch the doorway.
The feeds were clear enough to pick up small movements. Even a curtain twitch, a shoe on the floor.
There were timestamps, file names, and little bits of metadata. Jessica pulled up logs and scrolled. "All these devices were active and have been recording for weeks. Motion triggers, saved to local storage." Her voice sounded flat, but nothing about her revelation felt the same.
"These were not some forgotten cameras. Someone set them up on purpose." Her words turned the direction of my thoughts.
A cold shiver crawled down my spine. If someone had set up cameras here...in this ruin, they expected people to be present there. And they wanted to watch them. Or should I say set an eye on them...for control.
My mind dragged me back to the car crash, Josh and Elena’s sudden disappearance. Josh couldn’t pull this stunt off without having strong backup.
In that moment, I felt exposed, like a puppet who had just realized that he was not in control but controlled by unknown strings.
"Why would they set up cameras in an abandoned house?" I asked, though I knew the answer might be ugly, yet I wanted to hear it.
Jessica didn’t answer right away. She flipped to another feed and then froze. "There," she said as she zoomed in so that the image filled the screen.
In the feed, a wall had a rough, round hole. Not some normal rat hole but a big, dark, jagged gap in plaster.
The camera’s angle made the hole look like a mouth. Something had been knocked through. "That hole. Someone used it as a passage." She whispered out.
I leaned closer when Maximus’ voice echoed through my earpiece, "Where?"
Jessica’s head jerked up as she realized where she was. Without wasting another second, she said, adjusting her headset, "In the room off the east wing," she replied without looking up.
"The feed shows the wall. The motion log picked up activity near that wall two days ago." She continued while pulling up the timeline and scrubbed back.
The picture jumped, jerky and dark, but then two figures crossed the frame. Though it was just for a brief moment. It felt like a ghost moving.
The clothing in the blur, the posture, everything looked wrong in the way only fear makes you move. Before I could take a closer look, we were interrupted by a tiny beep from Jessica’s tablet, which cut through the quiet.
"Hold up," she said. "I am pulling an enhanced frame." She enlarged an image taken from a ceiling cam near the hole. I squinted as my eyes strained at the grainy still.
It was rough, but I could make out shapes on the floor in the new light. It was a small shoe. A pink shoe. It was not some fancy piece, just an old and torn one. It belongs to a child, but it was not the worst.
The worst thing was that a child was here in this house...or should I say this ruin. That too with Josh. For God knows how many days.
Jessica zoomed again, and my throat tightened. It looked like a bit of ribbon, faded pink, half-buried in dust. My chest tightened with all the things that monster would have done to that child. To Elena.
"There’s evidence of a child habitation. Could not specify if there were multiple of them, but the evidence shows not long ago."
I had to force the noise out. "How long?"
"Hard to say for sure, but look at these timestamps. There was an activity cluster two days ago until everything stopped after that. Then another detection was shown yesterday night which could be of that man...Josh."
Maximus’s voice cut in again. "Samantha, check the room with the hole while I and others will check the rest of the house. Be alert, and Jessica, keep watching."
"On it," Samantha replied.
I sat down, though my hands trembled while silence deafened me every passing second.
The screen jumped as Jessica switched feeds.
For a second, the image was grainy, then it became clearer. Samnatha’s silhouette showed over the footage as she walked into that room.
She swiftly moved across the room, her gun pointing, ready to shoot anyone coming in front of her.
"Sam’s in. The Feed’s live. She’s in the east wing room with the hole." Jessica said, her voice tight from pressure.
Her flashlight cut a narrow beam through dust. I watched every small motion as if it were a heartbeat I could measure.
"Samantha, report," Maximus’ voice came over the line.
There was a small rustle over the line, then Samantha’s calm voice, low and precise as she started giving details, "Room is small, no source of clear ventilation. There’s an old sleeping bag against the far wall. The chain bolted to the floor is now broken. Floor’s stained with..."
Her words were clipped, but the sudden pause made my heart sink. When I thought she would not speak, her voice fell into my ear, "Looks like blood splattered over the floor, old and dried."
The words hit me like a punch. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt. The room on the screen was quiet, awful in its stillness.
"Blood?" I whispered into my mic before I even realized I had spoken.
"Looks like it. The color seemed to be covered by dust, but I am pretty sure it’s blood spatter. I cannot specify how old it is. We need to test it before saying anything."
My mind raced. Blood. Sleep bag. Chain. The image of Emma or a child, being chained, hurt, made my blood boil and turned cold at the same time. They shouldn’t be here at first.
Not here.
Not with him.
Not near whatever winded plan had dragged us into this mess.
Samantha moved closer on the live feed. Her boot scuffed the floor. She crouched, flashlight sweeping the sleeping bag’s edge. "There are crumbs of food, wrappers," she said.
"Child-size blanket shoved under the bag. Smells... stale, like someone drank and slept here days ago."
My throat tightened. I could feel the tightness reach my hands. My fingers dug the taser’s handle until it hurt. "Keep watching. We are coming. Mark everything. Jessica, log timestamps. Everything." Maximus ordered them.
I could feel the roughness in his voice as he also didn’t expect the situation to worsen.