With a shaky hand, I pull my phone out of my back pocket. Ollie is looking at the door with squinted eyes, hand moving up to push it open even more. Before he can do anything, though, I grab his hand.
"Leave it as it is," I tell him when he looks over at me. "The police will like to see it how we found it."
"Why isn't the alarm going off?" Ollie mumbles in response but allows me to pull him back over to the car. "We set it before we left. It should be going crazy, especially since the door is cracked open."
Nico answers the phone just as I am sitting back in the car. "Hungry again already, Milo?"
"Still not funny, Nico," I say, words coming out strained, no matter how hard I try to keep my voice neutral.
He instantly turns serious, shifting into big brother mode. "What's wrong?"
"I-I think someone's in our house." Ollie moves closer to me, twining his fingers with mine. "We just got home and our door is open. Our alarm isn't even going off. Something isn't right."
Nico curses, rustling coming over the phone as he moves quickly. "Stay right where you are. I'm on my way." He hangs up the alone then, obviously in a rush to get here as soon as possible.
Dropping the phone away from my ear, I squeeze Ollie's hand. "He is on his way."
Nodding his head, Ollie brings our hands closer to his face, kissing the back of mine. "I hope whoever broke in didn't steal everything." He sits up straight then. "Oh God, Emmie." Faster than I thought possible, he climbs out of the car and runs over to the house.
"Ollie!" I call out, trying to climb out of the car after him.
He stops by the front door, crouching down and calling out the cat's name. With every second that passes he is getting more stressed, voice getting more frantic as he calls the cat's name. I have just managed to pull myself from the car when the door creeks open a few more inches.
Emmie runs out of the house, and Ollie immediately scoops her up, carrying her back over to the car. "Thank God she wasn't hurt."
Nodding, I give her a few pets but don't dare to take her away from Ollie. It seems that both of them need the comfort right now.
"Why would someone even break in?" I ask, leaning against the car. It just seems like too much work to get myself back in the car, when I am going to have to haul myself back out once Nico gets here. "It isn't like we have a lot of expensive stuff."
"People break in for less than what we own," Ollie says, sidling up next to me. "Who knows what they decided to take."
Nico is pulling up then, his car screeching as he pulls up alongside us in the driveway. He throws the door of the car open, clambering out with no grace at all.
"Good, you guys stayed out." He pulls me into a hug. "For once, you actually listened to me." He pulls away looking over at the house. "The door was just open like that when you guys got home?"
"Yeah," Ollie says, "The door was just cracked. But we always double check that it is locked and that the alarm is set. The weird thing is that the alarm wasn't going off when we got here. It should have been blaring if someone broke in."
"Does anyone else know the code, besides the two of you?"
"Of course not," I say, leaning against Ollie's side. "We changed it, just like the guy who installed it said to do."
"I'm just asking, Milo," he says, "Don't take out your frustration on me."
His words have me tensing up, wanting to argue with him. But the tenseness of his face belies his worry. Sighing, I force the argument that was building from my mind. "I'm sorry."
Nico nods his head. "You two stay here. I'm going to take a look inside."
Despite not wanting him to go in there alone, I know I can't stop him. He is a cop, after all. He knows how to handle these situations, has been trained to go into scary situations and handle them in safe and responsible ways. But he is still my brother, and I still worry.
Ollie allows me to squeeze tightly onto his hand, laying my head on his shoulder. My eyes remain on the door though, watching as Nico cautiously walks inside, turning on the hall light before he disappears from view.
"God, I hope the person who did this isn't still in there," I whisper.
"I highly doubt they stuck around," Ollie says, pulling me tighter against him. "Even if they did, Nico knows how to handle that situation better than either of us."
His words calm me a bit, but the tension doesn't leave my body until my brother comes walking out the front door.
"No one?"
He shakes his head at Ollie's question, his brows drawn together. "No, and I can't be sure, but it doesn't look like anything was stolen. No mess or anything either."
"What the hell?" I mumble. "Why did someone even break in then, if they didn't want to steal anything?"
"Different people have different motives," Nico says, eyes moving over to where the security camera is hanging. "But maybe we can figure out who broke in and what the took." He looks back over at us. "Let's get you two inside, and we can check out the recordings from the cameras."
The three of us- and Emmie- all head into the house, triple checking that the door is locked behind us. Grabbing my laptop, I move over to the dining room table and take the closet seat. Ollie and Nico crowd behind me as I type in the URL and password for our security feed.
Nico takes over once the cameras are pulled up, since he knows how to work this system a lot better than I do. He easily pulls up the recorded files. "You were gone for the entire afternoon, so we just have to figure out what hour they came."
Ollie wanders off after fifteen minutes, coming back with some tea for all of us. It is only when my tea is cool that we see movement on the cameras.
"Here we go," Nico says, catching all of our attention.
At first there is nothing, but finally, someone bulky- wide shoulders and chest- comes into view. They are dressed in all black, a hat pulled firmly over their head. They crouch down in front of the door, fiddling with the lock., and too soon for my liking, the door swings open. The person startles slightly, most likely from the alarm going off. But they don't let that stop them. They come into the house, and must successfully turn off the camera.
"We don't have an indoor view," Nico says, "so we'll just have to see what they leave with."
They aren't in the house for long, before they come back out of the house with only a few folded up pieces of paper in their hands. Never do they look up, giving us a view of their face.
"What the hell?" Ollie says, eyes scrunched in confusion. "They broke into our house for a few papers?"
"There is no chance this is just a random break-in," Nico says, closing the laptop before looking over at us. "They came here for a specific purpose: to get whatever those papers may be. This is personal."
"Papers," I murmur. "Ollie, can you grab me that manila file up there, please?"
My heart is pounding, hand shaking as I take the file from Ollie. As quickly as I can, I flip through all the papers, but immediately I notice that half of the documents in here are missing.
"These are all the documents that have to do with the divorce: doctor's records, Herri's notes, and Janette's documents that she gave to us."
"Anything missing?" Nico asks.
"Oh yeah," I breathe, quickly looking through it again. "At least half of the papers. All of them we can get again, Herri has copies of them all."
"That's good, right?"
I nod my head, but can't stop my heart from racing once I realize which papers are the ones missing.
"Than what's wrong?" Nico says, resting his hand on my shoulder. "Something has you worried."
"Janette's files," I whisper. "Those are the only papers that are missing." My mind immediately plays back that security camera recording, and the fact that Nico said that this was most likely personal. "Oh god, I think it was Aaron."
Ollie doesn't even seem surprised, always expecting the worst from that alpha. "Didn't think he would go this far. Makes sense how he knew the alarm code, seeing as it's your birthday, love."
"Nico, you have to go check up on them," I say, grabbing onto his hand. "He wasn't supposed to know that she did this, and now he does. We all know his anger problems. He has never hit me but got close right before he left. Who knows what he will do to Janette once he finds out that she turned on him."
"I thought she left him?" Ollie says.
"She did. Virginia found her a rental and helped her move out. But, I wouldn't be surprised if he managed to find her."
The worry is only growing stronger the longer I think about how Aaron lashes out when he loses control of a situation. Janette is most definitely in danger, and it is even worse since she is on her own with a newborn baby.
"Nico, you have to go check on her."
My brother doesn't even question me, just stands up. "Send me those security files. I'll need those to help with the case if you end up being right about him going after her. Do you know her address?"
Nodding, I push myself up from the table, needing to move around with all the worry building up inside me. "I'll text it to you." Grabbing my phone on the table, I quickly copy and paste the address that Janette had sent me. Ollie and I had visited her after she came home from the hospital with her daughter.
As soon as his phone pings, Nico is towards the door. "Stay inside. I'll come by tomorrow with some new, impossible to pick, locks." Typing in a number, he puts the phone up to his ear. "Sheriff, we may have a situation."
Ollie locks the door behind my brother, then comes over to me. No matter how much I want to pace, I have to sit down, the pressure on my hips becoming too much. The couch feels wonderful, and Ollie starts to massage the back of my neck.
"God, Ollie, he's spiraling out of control."
"As long as no one gets hurt, then let him. He deserves to have his world come crashing down."
Nodding my head, I let my eyes fall closed, but I can't help but think of Janette and her baby, hoping that Nico makes it to them in time.