My jaw tensed.
“Hey,” Emersyn said with a friendly smile.
Skye didn’t return it. Her gaze darted to me briefly.
“Hi,” Skye said, her tone tight.
An awkward pause settled over us until Emersyn said, “Can we come in?”
Skye blinked. “Oh.” She stepped back, glancing at me for another second before looking away. “Please, come inside.”
Emersyn went in, and I followed.
The cabin was small. It was designed for one to two people at most. Worn oak cabinets hung on the right side in the kitchen. A small couch faced a TV mounted in the back left corner. Close to the front door, opposite the kitchen, was a dining table that looked as if it was being used as a makeshift desk. Stacks of papers were organized in tidy piles. A camera and collapsed tripod were laid out there next to an open laptop.
Skye folded her arms over her chest, as if she were cold. She wore an oversized sweatshirt and leggings, which was more casual than she usually dressed. Skye had always been very aware of her appearance. She’d wanted to come off as put together. Capable. She never wanted anyone to look at her and think less.
“That’s the computer that isn’t working?” Emersyn asked as she approached the table.
Skye nodded, the desperation stark in her eyes. “I have no idea what happened. It was working fine this morning. I went out for a few hours and when I came back to upload some footage, the whole thing went crazy.”
I glanced at the laptop. It looked like it had been turned off or went to sleep. “May I?”
Skye nodded again.
Sitting down at the empty seat in front of it, I pressed the spacebar to wake the thing up. “Can you describe the problem?”
I didn’t look at her as the screen lit up.
“I don’t exactly know,” she said softly. The uncertainty in her voice was something I wasn’t used to hearing. “At first, I thought it was the Wi-Fi out here slowing things down. But then…stuff started disappearing. I’d click on something and it would say it was corrupted. I can’t access any of the footage I’ve already shot and a lot of my files seem to have vanished.”
The uncertainty skirted the line of panic the longer she talked.
I frowned as the home screen finally popped up. I opened the activity manager to get an idea of what was going on.
The first thing I noticed was the CPU usage—it was way too high for what the system should’ve been doing on startup. The fan kicked on loudly, the computer heating up even though I hadn’t opened anything.
“Something’s running in the background,” I muttered.
“What does that mean?” Skye asked, voice tight.
“Could be nothing. Could be a stuck process. Or…” My eyes narrowed as I spotted a program I didn’t recognize using a surprising amount of power. I clicked into the directory. No application name, just a string of numbers and letters.
That was never good.
“Have you plugged in any unfamiliar devices lately?” I kept my voice steady.
“No? I mean…” Her brow furrowed. “Well, last week, Brandon—Detective Whize—gave me a thumb drive. He said Emersyn asked him to bring it to me.”
I looked up at Emersyn. She hadn’t mentioned that.
“What thumb drive?”
Emersyn lifted her shoulders. “I’ve known Brandon for a long time. He said he could help with the documentary and I told him to connect with Skye.”
“Where is it?” I turned back to Skye. “The thumb drive.”
She reached for her leather bag on one of the empty chairs and rummaged through before pulling out a small pouch and unzipping it. She retrieved the thumb drive from inside and handed it to me.
