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I laughed to myself at how good it would feel to send something like this. But I couldn’t afford to be impulsive.

Wheels of a chair squeaked as my neighbor rolled to see me through the opening to my cubicle. “Hey, Louisa. You got that work order that’s due next week?” He rattled off the work order number for some simple task of revamping the firewall for one of the clients.

“Yeah.”

“I can do that one after I’m done with this that I’m on now. Can you send it to me with a reminder for next week’s start time?”

I nodded, sliding out of the email window to send the work order to him with the requested date next week.

Done and still feeling down, I let my email go sit in drafts. I could reread it and add more choice words when I was angry. It could be my form of therapy, venting like a journal in emails I’d never have the guts to send.

Even though I tried to stay busy with other work orders for help-desk sort of IT tasks that could be completed around checking the surveillance monitors, I felt idle.

And stuck.

I’d drive myself crazy dwelling on how I couldn’t be more present for Brady. None of the work orders were preoccupying me much, so I found a more in-depth one in the digital docket for the team.

Well, this will kill some time.

I switched to the backup servers to double-check that certain files were uploading properly after an upgrade complicated some automated codes. It wasn’t anything overly complex, but as I double-checked files and their properties, I realized that more footage was in here than what the other programs showed.

“Huh?” I went back and forth, lining up the dates and properties of videos. Everything that was captured on cameras that Pickering owned would be saved and backed up for clients for up to a certain number of years. But this one, with the cameras near a warehouse…

Oh, my God.

These are the ones that I thought I made a copy of.

Perking up and sitting straighter, I focused on finding the five minutes’ worth of footage that I hadn’t been able to come back to that night and review.

Wait, what is this?

There was a gap, a jump in the main computer’s feed. Five minutes were missing in what would be sent to the client, the property owners of that warehouse. But in this backup…

“What is this?” I furrowed my brow, not sure why those minutes would be missing. I’d written in my report that night that something glitched in that specific video. Now, as I replayed it…

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered. My heart hammered so fast as I sucked in a deep gulp of air.

On the screen, in black and white grayscale, was the same thing that I thought I saw before.

A body bag being carried from a car to a warehouse. No. It was in reverse. A body bag carried by two men as they moved it from a warehouse to a car.

Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

This couldn’t be anything innocent. This had to signify criminal activity. A… murder. Or transportation and concealment of a murder.

I forced a swallow, knowing that I was witnessing something dangerous. But I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell Owen. He wouldn’t believe me. He’d dismiss me. And if I took this to the cops…

I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, fuck.”

One of the men carrying one end of the body bag was a cop. Someone in a cop’s uniform was helping the other thug to transport the body.

I sat back, pressing my hand on my chest as the fear consumed me. Terror gripped me.

Replaying the backed-up copy that I must have accidentally made while erasing the original, I knew that this could only mean one thing.

It looked like someone had been murdered.

And the police know…