Nate moseyed through the house, not wanting to risk missing anything. Every time he heard something, be it a floorboard creaking beneath his own feet, the rumble of the furnace kicking on or off, or a gentle moan of the building settling, he startled and pressed himself against a wall, his thumb hovering over the switch on his flashlight. And every time, he scowled and scolded himself for letting himself be afraid of simple sounds. [i]Normal[/i] sounds. If someone wanted inside, they would have already been here and gone months ago.
	Finally, he neared the stairs that led to the second story that housed the bedrooms and the upper floor of Velma’s lab. As he passed a door left open a crack, he heard the gentle, familiar [i]swish[/i] of an opening window.
	Once more, Nate pressed himself against the wall beside the door and clicked his flashlight off as the soft [i]thud[/i] of someone stumbling inside followed the sound of the window. Someone else was here. Had the criminal responsible for all this decided to return to the crime scene, after all this time?
	Without fully thinking it through, Nate gripped his hefty flashlight like a club, kicked the door the rest of the way open, and rushed inside with a guttural shout, hoping, at the very least, to catch whoever-it-was off guard. Alas, the door bounced off the jam on the wall directly beside it and swung back toward him. He shouted again, this time in surprise as the edge of the door clipped him before he could move out of its way. His back hit the wall, accidentally flipping the light switch beside the door frame and flooding what was a large storage room with light.