Ursula shrugged. “It’s the school holidays. I’m much stricter when he has to go to school. But he’s a boy with lots of energy, and he needs to hang out with his friends. He’s an only child, you know.”
At the front door, Ursula stopped. “I hope you find your friend.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
A moment later, the door fell shut behind Blake’s sister-in-law. For a while, Lilo just stood there, lost in her own thoughts. She’d only just met Blake, but she practically knew his entire family already: Rose, his cousin, Ursula, his sister-in-law, and Sebastian, his nephew. Not to speak of his friends and colleagues and their kids. Her last boyfriend had taken several months before reluctantly introducing her to his brother, and by the time he was ready to introduce her to his mother, Lilo had been ready to break up with him.
Surprised at the direction her thoughts had taken, she shook her head. One kiss didn’t make a boyfriend. It was best that she be realistic about that and concentrate on what was important: finding Hannah.
A loud noise interrupted her thoughts. It originated in the kitchen, where, judging by the shrieks, the slamming of doors and drawers, and the three boys talking over each other, something was getting out of hand.
16
Lilo pushed the door to the kitchen open and stepped into chaos. Nicholas was shouting at the two younger boys as they fought over the half-gallon carton of orange juice.
“There’s enough for both of you!” Nicholas ground out. “You idiots!”
Instantly both boys glared at him.
“You’re the idiot!” Adam let out.
Nicholas suddenly growled like an animal. “Don’t talk to me like that!” He lunged at his brother.
“Stop it!” Lilo screamed, rushing toward them.
All heads turned to her, and several things happened at once. Nicholas crashed into Adam, and Adam released his hold on the orange juice, knocking his elbow into Sebastian’s stomach. Sebastian gasped, and also let go of the carton, his hand instinctively flying to his stomach to protect himself.
The carton tipped over, and the orange liquid spilled over the counter, soaking everything on it.
“Oh shit!” Adam cursed in a tiny voice, his eyes darting to the counter.
But Lilo was already rushing toward it, trying to save what could be saved. She was too late: Hannah’s appointment book sat in a puddle of orange juice, its padded cover soaking up the liquid, the decorative dried flowers dissolving into a gooey mess.
“Oh no!” she cried out.
“Sorry,” Sebastian said, stepping away from the counter to let her pass. Then he pointed his finger at Adam and Nicholas. “But those two started it.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said to the boy. Reprimanding him wouldn’t help now that the proverbial milk was spilled. Instead, she quickly reached for a kitchen towel and lifted the appointment book up, wrapping it in the towel and soaking up as much of the liquid as she could, hoping the pages weren’t ruined.
Lilo stepped aside to the kitchen island, where it was dry, and grabbed a fresh towel, still trying to salvage the book. Behind her, Nicholas took charge of the clean-up efforts.
“It dripped on the floor, too,” he said. “Adam, get me another towel.”
His brother voiced no protest, but Lilo wasn’t paying much attention to the boys now. Her focus was on saving the pages of Hannah’s appointment book, and preserving the writing inside. Carefully, she dabbed the sides of the book with the dry towel, hoping that the orange juice hadn’t damaged it too badly. When it looked like she’d soaked up all the liquid, she set the towel aside and opened the book in the middle.
Some of the liquid had bled about an inch into the book, but hadn’t done any damage to the writing. She leafed through the book and sighed in relief, before closing it again. That’s when she saw it: the padded back cover was starting to peel away. She turned the book over and suddenly noticed a bump underneath the cover. Delicately she peeled the damaged padding away.
A gasp escaped her.
There, affixed to the hard cover of the book, hidden underneath heavy padding, sat a thin USB stick. On its shiny casing, the letter H was written with a pink Sharpie.
“Hannah,” she murmured to herself. Only Hannah could have put it there.
Nicholas was suddenly standing next to her, staring curiously at the appointment book. She met his gaze, but didn’t say anything.
After a moment of silence, he looked over his shoulder. “Hey Adam, Sebastian, how about we play some videogames?” Then he ushered the two younger boys into the living room.
When the door fell shut behind them, Lilo took a deep breath. Maybe now she’d find out what had been troubling Hannah. For her friend to hide a USB stick in her appointment book, something serious had to be going on.
She reached for the USB stick. It was a little damp, so she dried it. Remembering Adam’s comment that she could use the laptop in the kitchen, she walked to the nook and sat down in front of the computer. She jiggled the mouse, and the screen woke up.
While she inserted the stick into a USB port, all kinds of ideas as to what data she would find coursed through her head. Had Hannah come across some government corruption or witnessed a crime? Had she come into possession of important documents that had inadvertently put her in danger? Was she involved with some kind of organized crime, like the Mafia, Russian or otherwise?
Finally, a window opened, displaying the contents of the memory stick: one single file. A video. She double-clicked it, then extended the picture to full screen.
She recognized the setting immediately. It was Hannah’s apartment. The angle at which the recording was taken suggested that the camera had been sitting on the bookshelf. Almost as if she’d had a baby-cam. Or a dog-cam. Hadn’t Hannah mentioned a few months earlier that she’d wanted to keep an eye on Frankenfurter during the day while she was out working? Had she bought a hidden camera to do just that?
Well, it didn’t matter. What mattered was what the video showed. There was no audio. Nevertheless, it was evident that the two men in Hannah’s living room were arguing. One of them was Ronny—she recognized him from the picture Blake had shown her. The other one stood with his back to the camera, preventing her from seeing his face.
Why had Hannah hidden this USB stick, when all it showed was her boyfriend arguing with another man? Without sound, she couldn’t even make out what they were fighting about. Maybe a lip reader could decipher some of the things Ronny was saying, but the other man’s replies remained unknown.