My 4-year-old daughter pointed at my boss's ear and kept saying, "Daddy's there" — but my husband had passed away, so when I looked closer, I couldn't believe WHAT she was actually pointing at.

By 3:00 PM, the storm clouds broke open, unleashing a torrential downpour that veiled the landscape in gray sheets of rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance, masking the sound of tires as I parked my car half a mile down the private access road, concealing it in a dense thicket of roadside brush.

I pulled on a dark hooded raincoat and slipped the RF scanner into my jacket pocket. Stepping out into the rain, the mud sucked at my boots as I cut through the tree line surrounding the southern perimeter of Harold’s estate.

The perimeter fence was an eight-foot iron barrier topped with non-lethal deterrent spikes. Using the wire cutters and the crowbar, I found a drainage culvert running beneath the iron fence where rainwater gushed out toward the public ditch. Slipping down into the cold, muddy water, I crawled through the concrete pipe, emerging on the other side inside the dense pine forest that buffered the estate.

I pulled out the RF scanner. The digital display flickered to life.

I set the frequency dial to the UHF bandwidth specified in Mike’s notes. Immediately, the signal needle jumped from zero to two bars, a low static chirp vibrating through the scanner’s earpiece.

*He’s here.*

The needle swung sharper toward the northeast, pointing directly away from the brightly lit glass mansion and toward the overgrown trail leading down to the artificial reservoir.

I moved through the pines like a phantom, staying low, ducking behind ancient oak trunks whenever headlights from a distant security vehicle swept across the main driveway. The rain drummed loudly against the canopy above, drowning out the sound of my footsteps.

After ten minutes of navigating through the slippery undergrowth, the silhouette of the old stone pump-house emerged through the veil of rain.

It was a decaying, moss-covered structure built from rough river stone, its heavy slate roof sagging under the downpour. The iron windows were covered from the inside with thick steel plates, bolted directly into the masonry. A heavy industrial padlocked door sealed the entrance.

I approached the rear of the building, holding the RF detector against the damp stone.

The device shrieked with a solid five-bar reading.