Intruder Breaks into Amaia's Home and Steals a USB Drive

The intrusion into Amaia Salazar’s home turns a private space into another point of pressure in the investigation surrounding Jonan Etxaide’s apartment. The intruder leaves no obvious disorder, but the unlocked door and missing USB drive tell Amaia that someone has crossed into her home—and that the evidence she is pursuing may have put others in danger as well.

Background and Threat

The break-in occurs after Amaia has found fibers in Jonan Etxaide’s apartment and arranged for a sample to be analyzed independently. While she was waiting for the trauma-cleaning crew at the apartment, she collected the fibers and gave a sample to Doctor Takchenko, the Russian doctor who regularly performs parallel analyses for the investigators in Aínsa. The sample’s unusual route matters: it is not simply part of a routine examination but evidence Amaia has deliberately placed beyond the usual channel.

On the way to her home, Doctor Takchenko was run off the road and her car was searched. She is expected to recover, and the sample was not taken because she had already sent it by DHL. The sequence establishes a threat against the forensic work before Amaia finds the intrusion at her own address. The evidence does not establish who is responsible for either incident, but the attack on the doctor and the entry into Amaia’s home make the fibers appear important to someone.

The Search of the House

Amaia notices the first irregularity as soon as she puts her key in the lock. She normally turns it twice; this time the door opens with the first turn. She steps back to check the deserted street, draws her gun, then approaches again and listens for movement inside. Hearing nothing, she pushes the door open and inspects the entrance before switching on the light. The familiar house has become a place to clear, room by room.

She checks James’s study downstairs, then moves through the kitchen, an empty room, the living room, a bathroom, the room her mother-in-law had prepared for Ibai, her own bedroom and bathroom, and the empty closets. No one is there. As she retraces her steps and switches off the lights, however, she cannot shake the conviction that somebody has been inside. In the living room she studies the maps pinned to the bookcase and feels so certain of an unfamiliar presence that she can almost outline the space it occupied. Nothing appears displaced; the force of the scene lies in the contrast between the unchanged objects and her certainty that the house has been entered.

The decisive physical clue is not a disturbed room but an absence. Amaia is glad she erased the data on the computer, then realizes that the second USB drive she had left unused has disappeared. She takes her bag, leaves the house, and locks the door with the usual two turns. Her ordinary locking ritual, briefly defeated by the intruder, is restored only after she has left the vulnerable interior.

Amaia’s Response

Rather than remain inside or assume that the search is over, Amaia calls Fermín Montes and asks him to go to her aunt’s house and wait at the door until she arrives. She does not initially explain why. Montes agrees, then asks to be told what is happening in return. Her immediate concern is not only the compromised home but the possibility that the intruder might look for her aunt next; asking for a watchful presence extends the response beyond the house where the theft occurred.

Amaia then lays out the chain of events: the fibers from Jonan Etxaide’s apartment, the sample given to Doctor Takchenko, the doctor’s car being forced off the road and searched, and the discovery that someone has entered Amaia’s Pamplona home. She tells Montes that the missing drive was empty. That detail sharpens the uncertainty rather than resolving it. The drive is physically gone, but it contained no data; meanwhile, the fiber sample that might explain the attack on the doctor has survived because it was sent away in advance.

Montes identifies the apparent connection: the fiber seems important to someone, yet a person searching Amaia’s home for fiber samples has taken a USB drive instead. Amaia sighs and says that Jonan sent her a message. The scene breaks off at that disclosure, without explaining the message’s contents or establishing how it relates to the theft. The missing drive therefore remains a concrete sign of intrusion, not a solved clue.

Significance

The incident makes absence carry the weight of evidence. The entryway looks orderly, the rooms appear untouched, and the stolen device is empty; nonetheless, the lock’s first-turn opening and the missing drive confirm that Amaia’s sense of violation has a material basis. Her gun, careful room-by-room inspection, erased computer data, and return to the two-turn lock show how quickly ordinary domestic habits become part of an investigative security routine.

The mismatch between the apparent target and the object taken also keeps the threat unresolved. The doctor’s sample is safe, but someone has searched her car; Amaia’s home has been entered, but the missing USB contains nothing. The episode links the danger to the pursuit of Jonan’s fibers without proving the intruder’s identity or purpose. Its final turn toward Jonan’s message opens a further line of inquiry, while leaving the break-in itself suspended between warning and evidence.