Read Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

her web, ‘…nineteen fifty-three. That’s half an hour of darkness. Where exactly was she parked?’
    She opened Google Earth and Owain pointed out the row of parked cars right in front of the museum’s main entrance, a small park up against them and the main road a stone’s throw away.
    ‘How did no one see him?’
    Amy found the time window and camera angle on the CCTV footage she had stored. The image frame concentrated on the main entrance and quality was poor, but a few cars were visible in the background.
    ‘Show me the exact position,’ Amy said.
    Owain pointed at the leftmost car. ‘That one. Volkswagen Golf. Red, not that you can tell on this.’
    She scrolled through the footage, but only a few people passed by, not one stopping near the car. ‘He pulled this off in daylight.’
    She started again from nine in the morning, the car parking up after a minute and the day zipping past in a haze of people and cars. It was just after two o’clock when she saw him, wearing a baseball cap with an oversized hoodie drawn over it. He walked up to the car, his back to the camera, and reached for the window. He withdrew his hand and then returned it a moment later, seemingly passing through solid glass to delve inside. Within a minute, he was walking away across the park and it was all over.
    ‘Professional,’ Owain said.
    He sounded slightly awed but trying not to be. Most criminals in Cardiff tended to be gifted amateurs at best.
    ‘Inside information.’ Amy rewound the footage and captured the segment. ‘He knew exactly where she kept the key card.’
    ‘If she left it out, it would be easy. Or he looked the day before.’
    ‘We need to find out what he did to the car. Is it impounded?’
    ‘She already took it to a garage. We sent a couple of uniforms over there, but they’re a same-day service. The evidence is gone.’
    ‘The technique alone may be telling. We need to figure out his MO.’
    Owain’s hand settled on her shoulder. ‘There’s a lot of ‘we’ in this case suddenly.’
    It was odd, his hand being there. Only Jason touched her like that, but she didn’t move or shy away. He was warm and the smile on his face had grown more real.
    ‘Where’s your bloody – oh. Owain.’
    Owain’s hand fell from her shoulder but Amy did not look at Jason, her cheeks red with unnamed shame.
    ‘Just bringing over some evidence,’ Owain said, his voice too even, like a man calming a bull.
    ‘When she didn’t answer her phone, I thought…’ Jason trailed off.
    Guilt flooded her. She always answered her phone – and when she didn’t, she was immersed in a deep depression or a serial killer had broken into the house.
    But then she remembered she was angry with him. ‘How’s your NCA friend?’
    ‘At her hotel. You should’ve told me you had something for Amy – I could’ve brought it.’
    Jason’s voice was accusing, but he had no right to be angry. She burned with questions – how did he know Frieda was at her hotel? Had he escorted her there? Had he … lingered?
    ‘It came after you left,’ Owain said.
    But that didn’t add up. They would’ve checked the security logs early in the day and, besides, a personal delivery wasn’t required. He could’ve added them to Bryn’s evidence folder and called her.
    Which made her think he had come over to see her. But why?
    ‘You’d better be getting back to work,’ Jason said. ‘Because there’s so much to do, isn’t there?’
    Suddenly, she understood the hostility, though Owain’s actions now puzzled her further. If he had blown off Cerys for the case, why had he made time to see her?
    Owain moved away from her, past Jason and into the corridor beyond. She still didn’t look at Jason, even as she heard him plucking up the pieces of her phone from the floor.
    ‘He’s messing her around,’ he said.
    He had no idea she was annoyed. It was hard to stay angry with someone who was completely oblivious to it.
    ‘You need to be more