Turns out trauma nurses are good at waiting, too.
The break room is empty when I finally get there at two in the afternoon, that dead zone too late for lunch and too early forshift change. The coffee maker gurgles in the corner, half a pot of something that looks like it's been sitting since morning. I grab a cup anyway, more for the excuse to be here than because I want it, and boot up the staff computer tucked in the alcove behind the supply cabinet.
The computer takes forever to wake up because hospital IT budgets prioritize life-saving equipment over administrative convenience, which is fair but annoying. I plug in the USB drive while Windows struggles through its startup routine, trying to ignore the way my hands shake.
This is the first time in years my hands have shaken. The first time since Fairbanks, since Joel told me I was too intense and he needed space and I realized I'd spent months pretending to be smaller than I was just to make a man comfortable. The first time since I transferred south and swore I'd stop apologizing for being good at my job.
The files populate slowly. There are folders labeled with dates and alphanumeric codes that don't mean anything to me. I click one at random.
Encrypted.
I try another. It's the same thing. Some kind of password protection I don't recognize, files that won't open no matter what I click. Whoever set this up didn't want anyone getting in without the right credentials.
But metadata's still visible. I've read enough spy thrillers during night shifts to know that much—file properties, creation dates, basic information that encryption doesn't hide. I start scrolling through, piecing together what I can see:
Photos—dozens of them, judging by file sizes and extensions. JPEG format, high resolution, timestamps spanning over a year. Creation dates cluster around specific locations. I click on one folder's properties and see GPS coordinates embedded in the metadata. I copy them into Google Maps on my phone.
A roadhouse off the Parks Highway. I try another set of coordinates. Truck stop outside Wasilla. Another one pulls up a parking lot near a rest area on the Glenn Highway. The kind of places where business happens off the books.
Someone was watching these locations. Probably documenting who came and went.
Transaction records. CSV files, spreadsheets, the kind of data structure you use when you're tracking patterns. File names include references to dates and dollar amounts, all encrypted but organized with the methodical precision of someone building a case.
Text files that won't open without the password, but the naming convention suggests intercepted messages. Some are marked with codes that might be phone numbers or email addresses. Others are labeled with single words:CONFIRMATION.PAYMENT.DELIVERY.
Timeline documents. More spreadsheets, cross-referenced by date and location. I can see column headers in the file properties:DATE,LOCATION,VEHICLE,SUBJECTS,NOTES. Someone tracked movements over months, maybe years.
My coffee goes cold while I catalog what's here. This isn't personal files. This isn't music or photos or the random digital debris people accumulate. This is documentation. This is proof. This is the kind of thing someone builds when they're trying to prove what matters enough to hide, what's dangerous enough to encrypt, what's important enough to die for.
Emma was murdered during a trafficking investigation. Whatever she knew, whatever she documented, it got her killed. And her killer's still out there, still free, while what she gathered sat hidden in a locker nobody wanted to touch.
Logic completes the circuit before I can stop it. Whatever's on this drive is worth killing for, which means it needs to reachpeople who can actually do something about it. People with resources, authority, the power to act instead of letting it collect dust in a dead nurse's locker.
I pull out my phone and search for the FBI tip line before I can talk myself out of it. Sandra's voice echoes in my head,superstitious nonsense, but superstition has nothing to do with the cold certainty settling in my gut.
Emma knew something and documented it carefully. She died before she could use it. Someone needs to know this exists.
The automated system walks me through options: press one for tips about specific cases, press two for general information, press three for?—
I press one.
A real person this time. A woman's voice, professional neutrality that probably comes from answering a thousand calls a day from people who think their neighbor's a terrorist because he keeps weird hours.
"FBI tip line, how can I help you?"
"I found evidence," I say. "Hidden evidence. From a nurse who was murdered."
Silence on the other end. Not empty silence: background noise, keyboards clicking, someone talking in the distance. Active silence, the kind that changed the equation.
"Can you provide more details about the evidence?"
"USB drive. Hidden in a hospital locker. Belonged to Emma Blackwater—she was killed during a trafficking investigation in Alaska. The files are encrypted, but I can see metadata. Surveillance photos, transaction records, timelines. Documentation of something big."
"And you are?"
"Sela Mitchell. I'm a trauma nurse at Palmer Regional Hospital. I transferred here from Fairbanks and just gotassigned Emma's old locker today. Found the drive taped under the shelf liner."
"Where are you now, Ms. Mitchell?"
