After hearing an intruder in Adrienne Hale's house, Tricia watches Ethan arm himself with the largest kitchen knife he can find and head for the office. Although Ethan tells Tricia to stay put, Tricia follows because Tricia does not want Ethan to face a possible armed stranger alone.

At the office doorway, Ethan confronts a disheveled man standing inside and orders him to freeze with his hands up. Tricia observes that the stranger looks like a homeless drifter: thin, unkempt, poorly dressed, and frightened. The man claims he only broke in because he needed shelter from the cold and did not expect anyone to be in the house.

For a moment, Tricia feels sympathy and thinks the explanation might fit what she had suspected about a squatter using the empty property. Still, Ethan remains suspicious and asks why the man is in the office instead of hiding elsewhere. That question makes Tricia reconsider the story.

Tricia then notices that the man is standing close to the hidden floor compartment they discovered earlier, and Tricia realizes the crash they heard must have been the compartment slamming shut. The detail suggests the stranger was not merely seeking shelter but was searching the office and interfering with its secrets.

The man weakly claims he only came to investigate the noise, but Tricia connects that lie to the earlier unexplained reappearance of Adrienne Hale's portrait on the wall. Combining the familiar sound of the man's voice with the evidence that someone has been moving through the house, Tricia identifies him as Luke, Adrienne Hale's boyfriend.