“Don’t worry about it right now.” Keith nodded toward the flash drive in Lucky’s hand. “Watch the video.”
Lucky held the flash drive up to his nose and turned it over. Nothing special. A dozen just like it sat in the drawer of his desk. “What am I looking for?”
“I could tell you, but then you’d be looking only for that and might miss something important I didn’t see.”
No way would Lucky admit how much sense the man made.
Keith strode a few paces away and turned. “Oh, and Lucky?”
“Yeah?”
He nodded toward the wand. “Keep that. I have a feeling you’re gonna need it. And one more thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t trust anybody.”
“Never have, never will.”
“Good. I’m counting on you being a total bastard. To keep one of us in the know, I’m pretending to be on board with O’Donoghue, but I’ve got Walter’s back. Remember that in days to come.” Keith slunk into the shadows, leaving Lucky with more questions than answers. A moment later a door closed in the back of the house.
***
The flash drive burned a hole in Lucky’s pocket, but with Bo and the boys home when he got there, he didn’t dare disappear into the bedroom with his laptop.
He wolfed down his spaghetti and garlic bread—Todd’s first, rather successful attempt at cooking—picked at his salad, and tapped his foot through the movie Bo picked.
When the rest of the house fell quiet, Lucky slipped out of bed and into the living room. He grabbed his laptop bag from by the front door and headed out to the deck, Moose and Cat Lucky on his heels.
Crickets sang in the grass, and the scent of seared meat hung on the air, coming from the direction of the neighbor’s yard.
He fired up his laptop and shoved the flash drive into the port.
Anger rose as he watched the scene unfold in Walter’s office. Walter entered, sat behind his desk and set down a file. A cup of coffee waited on the desk.
He watched himself enter the office and sit down.
All appeared normal until Walter took a sip of coffee. Lucky’s eyes burned and a boulder lodged in his throat. What if he hadn’t been there?
Walter collapsed onto the floor, Lucky not quite fast enough to stop his fall.
The desk partially hid the team’s efforts to save him.
Team. A word he’d once despised.
Paramedics took Walter away on a gurney, Bo, Lucky, and Johnson filed out, and then the office remained empty.
What had Keith intended for him to see? Despite the knife twisting in his heart and his anger at Keith for installing the camera, he replayed the video clip again and again.
What was he missing?
He slowed the video, watching frame by frame, snorting in disgust when he reached the end and still hadn’t found anything noteworthy.
And then…
He paused the video, backed up the action, and started again. Shadows fell across the walls of Walter’s empty office. Barely distinguishable to the eye, a frame jumped.
Lucky watched again. The frame repeated the jump. He studied the before and after. The shadows were longer in the “after” version and…
