I stared at those times for several seconds. Fourteen minutes wasn’t much on an ordinary day. That morning, it felt enormous. It covered the exact period when something inside the house could have happened without being recorded by the kitchen camera.
I rubbed my thumb against the edge of my phone until the skin hurt. I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first. Then I opened the network history because the camera hub automatically recorded every recognized device that connected inside the house.
Most of the entries were mine.
Television. Thermostat. Tablet. Printer.
The familiar list made the final entry stand out even more.
One appeared only once.
4:18 a.m.
The device name was EVAN-IP15.
I read the device name again.
EVAN-IP15.
There was no reason for that entry to look ordinary just because the name did. It was one more detail that had appeared after a morning that already contained too many details that didn’t fit together.
I looked back toward the villa. From the driveway, the house still appeared almost exactly as it always had. The same front entrance. The same stone path. The same blue bowl beside the door.
But the spare key was gone.
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