We searched the suitcase.
Nothing.
He checked side pockets, the handle cavity, even the plastic base.
His expression tightened.
“It’s gone.”
Ava remained perfectly still.
“What’s gone?” I asked.
“A silver laptop.”
“I never packed a laptop,” Ava said.
Julian looked at her.
“You weren’t supposed to know it was there.”
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Brooke turned toward her sister.
“You came home because the compartment was empty.”
Ava said nothing.
“That’s why you came back early,” Brooke said. “You were looking for the laptop.”
Julian nodded.
“She thought I had taken it.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Ava’s eyes shifted toward the staircase.
Just once.
Barely.
But Brooke saw it.
“What’s upstairs?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
Brooke started for the stairs.
Ava grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t.”
Brooke pulled free.
“You keep saying that right before we find something.”
She climbed quickly.
I followed, leaving Ava with Julian in the living room.
At the top of the stairs, Brooke went straight to the guest room. The door was open from earlier, when she had hidden there with the folder before Ava came home. Her old tablet sat on the bed beside the copies she had brought. Nothing else seemed unusual.
Then Brooke noticed the loose vent cover near the floor.
“I didn’t move that,” she said.
She knelt and pulled it away.
Inside the duct sat a silver laptop.
My stomach dropped.
Brooke stared at it.
“That wasn’t here when I came upstairs.”
Footsteps sounded behind us.
Ava stood in the doorway.
Julian was several feet behind her.
My wife’s face showed nothing now.
No panic.
No anger.
Only exhaustion.
“You put it there,” Brooke said.
Ava shook her head.
“When?”
“I didn’t.”
“You were the only one upstairs before you left.”
“I said I didn’t put it there.”
Julian moved closer.
“Don’t turn it on.”
Brooke looked back.
“Why?”
“It may be traceable.”
I lifted the laptop out of the vent.
It was heavier than expected, with a strip of black tape covering the manufacturer’s logo. There were no scratches on it, no fingerprints, no signs it had been stored inside a wall for more than a few hours. It looked too clean for the house it had invaded.
Ava leaned against the doorframe.
“That laptop was supposed to be in the hotel room.”
Julian looked at her.
“So you admit you knew about it.”
“I knew there was a laptop. I didn’t know what was on it.”
“What were you told?”
Ava hesitated.
“That it contained financial records.”
“Whose?”
She glanced at me.
“Ryan’s.”
I stared at her.
“You believed that?”
“No.”
“But you still agreed to deliver it.”
“I thought it was leverage.”
Brooke laughed bitterly.
“You forged his name because you thought someone was bluffing?”
Ava turned on her.
“You don’t understand what they threatened.”
“Then explain it.”
The house felt smaller than it had ever felt.