Chapter 4 - The Woman in Blue
"They planned it," Emily said. She didn't sound shocked. That frightened her more than anything.
Rebecca looked between the screen and the doorway. "My badge was missing for an hour this morning. I reported it to Security. They told me to check the laundry room."
"Who told you?" Raymond asked.
"Mr. Graves. The chief financial officer."
Raymond's jaw tightened. "Why would the CFO be handling a nurse's badge?"
"Exactly," Rebecca said.
While Emily remained under Dr. Chen's care, Raymond took Rebecca to a quiet office across the hall. Miles Ortiz, the hospital's systems engineer, arrived carrying a laptop and a tangle of cables. He looked too young to be nervous around billionaires, which probably explained why he wasn't.
"The hallway cameras went dark for six minutes," he said. "Someone with executive access disabled the central recorder."
"And the elevator camera?" Raymond asked.
"Different vendor, different storage. Whoever erased the main feed forgot about it."
Rebecca folded her arms. "I watched Vanessa move toward Emily. It wasn't an accident."
"Would you say that to a detective?" Raymond asked.
"I'd say it to a jury."
The elevator feed loaded frame by frame. Emily stood at the railing, her beige dress stretched over her belly. Preston leaned toward Vanessa. Their mouths moved. There was no sound, but the timing was unmistakable: a nod, a step, the kick.
Rebecca covered her mouth. "He gave her permission."
"Maybe," Raymond said. "We need the original file, not just what we're seeing on a screen."
Miles plugged in an external drive. A progress bar crawled. At ninety-six percent, the laptop went black. Somewhere beyond the door, an alarm chirped, followed by a second alarm.
"Power?" Rebecca asked.
"Not the whole building," Miles said. "Someone unplugged this network cabinet remotely."
He opened the door to the hallway. A man in gray maintenance coveralls was running toward the stairwell, a black drive clutched against his chest.
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Miles stared at the empty shelf inside the equipment closet.
"That's the original recorder," he said. "He's taking our only clean copy."
