THE MILLIONAIRE MOCKED A POOR WAREHOUSE WORKER—THEN HE SAW THE PHOTO IN HER HAND.

The footage showed me raising my hand. Graham stumbled backward. A guard rushed into the frame. Then the clip ended, six seconds after it began.

"That isn't what happened," I whispered.

"Of course it isn't," Ruth said. "Graham pays people to make lies look official."

I replayed the clip. The camera angle cropped my left arm, hiding the photograph. More important, the video had no sound. It made my desperate step forward look like an assault.

"I need the original security file."

Ruth shook her head. "You need to stay away from that building."

"If I run, they'll make me the criminal."

"If you go back, they might make you a body."

I called the only person at Bellwether who had ever stood up for me: Nia Brooks, our inventory analyst. She answered on the second ring.

"Girl, what did you do? Security's checking lockers. They say you stole a million dollars in merchandise."

"I'm being framed. Can you get camera footage from Aisle Seventeen?"

"Not from my terminal. Marcus locked down the system. But I saved a copy of the shipment log before he did. Why was Whitcomb in the destruction aisle?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

She exhaled sharply. "Elena, the shipment the picture came from? It was logged into the building in 2004 and marked destroyed that same week. Somebody reopened the record yesterday."

"Who?"

"A user named S.Torres."

My chest felt hollow. "That's impossible."

"I know your mom's name. That's why I'm calling."

Ruth grabbed my wrist when I said I was going to meet Nia. "Graham knows you have the picture. He'll watch everyone you know."

"Then what do you want me to do?"

"Find the blue room. But don't use the front door."

She slid the brass key across the seat. The head was painted cobalt blue. A small number was engraved beneath the paint: 17-B.

I knew that number. I had passed a sealed maintenance corridor behind Aisle Seventeen hundreds of times. A rusted door at the end bore a faded letter B.

Before I could ask Ruth whether that was the room, a police cruiser pulled up across our parking space. Two officers got out.

Ruth went pale. "They found us."