Chapter 42

chapter

forty-two

Gage wasn’t certain he’d heard Nia correctly. “They’re gone? You don’t have backup copies of your files on a Cloud somewhere?”

“I checked the backup. These files are gone from that also.” Her jaw hardened. “I’ve got to pull up my security cameras. See who has been in here. First, let me talk to Melissa.”

She stuck her head out the door and called her assistant into the office. Gage listened carefully, curious to hear what would transpire.

Melissa—who couldn’t be any more than twenty-three, twenty-four years old—rushed to her feet, knocking a stack of papers from her desk in the process. “What’s going on?”

“Has anyone been in my office the past two days?” Nia asked, helping her assistant to gather papers.

“Besides you?” Melissa grabbed the last of the papers, took the stack from Nia, and then straightened .

“That’s right,” Nia said. “Has anyone come in here while I was gone?”

Melissa swung her head back and forth, her motions still jerky with anxiety. “No, I haven’t seen anybody. As far as I know it’s been locked.”

“So you didn’t let anybody in for any reason?” Nia locked her gaze with Melissa’s. “Even a janitor or somebody in tech looking at the computer?”

“No, no one.” Melissa wrung her hands together. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m missing some files that were here on Tuesday.”

Melissa’s eyes widened. “I haven’t seen anything. I’ve been getting into the office every day at nine o’clock, and yesterday I didn’t leave until five.”

“Was anybody in the office before you got here?”

Her eyes wavered back and forth with thought. “Nancy in accounting. You know she always likes to get here early. And maybe Jeff in marketing. But I didn’t see either of them coming this way. Like I said, your door was locked.”

“Where do you keep the spare key?” Gage leaned against the desk with his arms crossed.

“It’s in the safe behind my desk,” Melissa said. “Near the island.”

“Who has the combination to the safe?” Gage continued.

“Just me and Ms. Anderson. That’s it.” Melissa offered an affirmative nod.

Nia and Gage exchanged another look.

Something wasn’t adding up here .

Nia thanked Melissa and dismissed her.

Then Nia went to her computer. “I’m going to look at this security footage myself.”

Then she began tapping away at the keyboard.

Gage’s lungs tightened as he waited to see what they might find.

Nia felt Gage standing behind her, watching what was on her screen.

She was fine with that. There was nothing there that he shouldn’t see.

She started with the night that Rob had been murdered. There was a wide-angle camera right outside her office. However, most people didn’t know it was there because it was hidden behind a plant. One of the companies she worked with had developed the small cameras, and she’d decided to keep one for herself.

She started by watching herself leave the office at six. She closed the door behind her and double-checked the lock, just like she always did. Melissa was gone already because Nia had worked a little later than usual.

For the longest time, no one was on the screen. Then at seven-thirty, Jeff wandered to Melissa’s desk. He poked around as if looking for something.

“Who is that?” Gage narrowed his eyes.

“Jeff. He’s the VP of Finance and a pretty low-key guy.”

Nia held her breath, waiting to see what else he did .

Would he reach for the safe?

He didn’t. A few minutes after nosing around, he walked away and didn’t come back on screen.

She fast-forwarded through the rest of that night.

Nothing else was in the footage.

She continued to fast-forward through the next day.

She saw Melissa come in. Later, Nia came into the office. Graham went into her office and left the door open to speak with her for a few minutes.

Then Graham left, just as Nia remembered. She closed her door before leaving a few minutes later.

Melissa left at five p.m., just as she said.

Nia frowned, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet.

If those files went missing, it had to be between the time she left last night and this morning when Melissa came in.

The answers should be in here somewhere .

She fast-forwarded.

“What about that Jeff guy?” Gage lingered behind her, and she was all too aware of his presence there. “What do you think he was doing?”

“I’m not sure.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to cast off the thoughts of how close Gage was. “But Jeff didn’t appear to take anything. For all I know, he was looking for a paper clip.”

Despite that, she kept Jeff’s image at the back of her mind.

At one-thirty a.m., Nia slowed the video feed, unsure if she was seeing correctly .

“You see that too?” she murmured.

“I do.” Gage’s voice stiffened.

A figure wearing all black, including a mask, paused outside her office door.

Nia watched to see what would happen next.