“Do you think you can figure out what mija saw on this?” Ruben interrupted.
Robert looked over at Ruben, and the smile disappeared from his face. He straightened up, snatching the camera from Ruben’s hand, and went back to my computer. I moved behind him and watched as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He was doing things to the computer system that I barely grasped. He was moving so fast, but I could see he was connected to an offsite computer and he was overriding some sort of software to get access to the camera.
“It’s one of ours,” he said, “so it should have backup on our system. But I think Adrienne overrode the system protocols.”
“Why?” Ruben asked.
Robert shrugged.
“Because she knew you thought it was me and she was trying to prove it wasn’t.”
“Or she was afraid I was right.”
I glanced at Ruben. He was watching me closely, his eyes narrowed. He still believed I had something to do with all of this.
“Here,” Robert said. “I’ve got the images.”
Ruben came around the desk, and we both watched as the camera footage began playing.
“These cameras only record twelve hours of footage at a time. They record over the footage if the user doesn’t save what was on it.”
“Did Adrienne—”
“It looks like she did,” Robert said as he tapped at the keys on my computer keyboard. “She saved footage from last night just after midnight.”
I nodded slowly. “Her computer was gone. She must have been checking the footage while I was out.”
“When the ‘kidnapper’ came in?”
I glanced at Ruben, at the speculation in his voice. “Exactly.”
“How do we know that you didn’t catch her looking at it? How do we know that she didn’t find evidence that you’d done something to her?”
“Because I would have been smart enough to erase the evidence.”
“Or change it.”
As Ruben said that, he gestured at the computer screen. At 12:07 am last night—while Adrienne and I were driving to San Antonio—someone let themselves into my office and crossed to the computer. The glow of the computer screen as it was woken revealed who the user was. My heart stopped in my chest. Of all the people I had expected to see standing there, this face was the never even on the list.
“Oh, hell,” I muttered, stepping back until my back hit the windows.
“You know who that is?” Ruben asked.
I nodded. “Adrienne saw this?”
“She saved it at two o’clock this afternoon,” Robert helpfully reported.
I nodded slowly, my head spinning.
“Who is it?” Ruben demanded.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell him the truth. But I couldn’t lie, either. What if she had Adrienne? What if she was the one behind all this? What if—
“Is there more on there?”
“Yeah,” Robert said, pushing a button that made the footage move forward again. The camera turned off when it didn’t detect movement in the room, so the next bit of footage didn’t show up until nearly dawn. A little before 6:30 in the morning.
“Too early for work,” I said softly as Jaime’s face appeared on the computer screen.
She picked something up from on top of the computer keyboard and placed it in the center of the blotter. Then she began typing on the keyboard, her fingers moving almost as quickly as Robert’s had. And then she looked up and spoke.
“Who’s she talking to?”
Robert shook his head. “Can’t tell from this angle.”
Jaime turned back to the computer, typed a moment longer, then grabbed whatever had been sitting on the blotter and took it with her when she left. The rest of the footage was just normal daily activity in the office.
“When Adrienne saved this footage,” Ruben asked slowly, “was she saving something specific or just this particular twelve-hour stretch of time?”
“There’s no way to save just one bit of footage on these cameras. It has to be downloaded onto a computer and edited that way.”
“Then we can’t know which person she reacted to when she saved the footage.”
I glanced at Ruben. For once he wasn’t staring at me. He was staring at the footage as it continued to play out.
“No, not really,” Robert said. “All we can know is that she saw this and she felt it was important enough to the case to save it.”
“Can you identify who’s on the tape?” Ruben asked me.
“The woman there,” I said, gesturing as Robert continued to let the footage play and Jaime again came into the office, “is my personal assistant.”
“Is she supposed to be in here, messing with your stuff?”
“She is.”
“What about the other woman?” Robert asked, reversing the footage until the first bit played again. “Do you know who that is?”
I had to be careful. I couldn’t just tell them. She couldn’t be behind all this, could she? What advantage would she get from all this?
Jacob, with is wonderful timing, suddenly burst into the room.
“There’s been another message.”
Chapter 30
Adrienne