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It pops open to reveal a locked box inside.

I nudge Theo with my elbow and nod toward it. “Think you can get into that?”

He arches a brow. “You say that like I didn’t open your locked file cabinet with a bobby pin.”

“Oh my god. I forgot about that.”

He shrugs, all false modesty. “You forgot because you swore me to secrecy. Something about not wanting your students to know their forensic psychology professor locks her research with a glorified paper clip.”

“Because it was embarrassing,” I hiss. “I bent the real key trying to open the damn thing one-handed while eating a slice of cold pizza I peeled the cheese off of.”

He opens it with another one of his lock picking magic tricks—at this point, I’m not convinced he wasn’t a spy in a past life—and inside⁠—

Drives.

A whole drawer full of USB drives. Each labeled.

Victoria C. – 08-04

Mayfair – 06-17

Witness Report – Redacted

All the warmth drains out of me in one sickening wave.

“Plug them in,” I say, already knowing this is going to wreck us.

Theo’s ahead of me. He has his laptop out in seconds, the soft glow of the screen throwing eerie shadows across his face. He moves with precision, hands steady. Calm. Which only makes the storm brewing inside my head feel worse.

One by one, we insert the drives.

Each one a digital bomb.

Audio recordings.

Surveillance footage.

Files full of witness statements, scanned documents, medical charts, email chains, metadata, forensic results so detailed it makes my stomach turn.

It’s all here.

Everything about Victoria’s death.

And Henry’s.

Most of it I recognize from our own files, bits I had to fight tooth and nail to get.

There’s a video feed labeled Compound – Night South.

I hesitate for half a second, then click it.

The footage loads: low-res, timestamped, the angle trained on a stretch of pathway I’ve walked a half dozen times during the day. At night, it looks foreign. Haunted.

Theo leans in close. “He has cameras all over the compound.”

“Which means he has to know what happened to Victoria,” I say, barely breathing. “Maybe even to Henry.”

My heart pounds in my ears.