Lorna was already coming around the counter so she could lead them to the office. ‘I’ll call and make sure it’s okay, just so you’ll feel better, but I already know it’s fine.’ She stopped near a pair of crooked swinging doors and hollered to someone they couldn’t see. ‘Lars, I’ll be in the office. I need you to cover the registers until I get back.’

‘Fine,’ a disgruntled voice yelled back.

‘Lazy jerk,’ Lorna muttered. Then, as they passed by the freezer section, she waved her hand upward where a camera was positioned. ‘That one never works. And more than half the time, the one outside doesn’t either. But even when it does, it’s difficult to tell what’s on the video. To be honest, Detective Wyatt’ – she shot a disgusted look over her shoulder – ‘it’s more of a hopeful visual deterrent to would-be criminals. But let’s be real – its presence does nothing. If someone wants to do something bad, a camera, working or not, isn’t going to stop a thing.’

Within a few minutes, Lorna tucked Alyssa and Cord into a miniscule office space that barely had room for one person to breathe, much less three. Even with the cooler air coming in from the cracked window set high up on the wall, the room was horrifically stuffy.

Having no desire to experience the claustrophobic sensation of being locked in a closet, Alyssa asked Lorna if she could leave the door open. Then she turned to Cord, ‘Oh yippee, I can’t wait to once again get embroiled in the eye-burning drudgery of watching grainy footage.’

She watched Elizabeth pull into the lot shortly after nine and wait inside her car for nearly five minutes until an older truck, maybe from the seventies, traveling from the south, drove up and parked perpendicular to the BMW. A dark cover obscured the truck’s license plate. When the driver climbed out of the car, Elizabeth followed suit. Unfortunately, because of the baggy hoody concealing the face, all they could tell was that the person was slightly shorter than Elizabeth.

For the next four minutes, even with the poor quality of the camera, it was clear to Alyssa that Elizabeth and the mystery person were engaged in an animated discussion. A point proved when Elizabeth Monroe tossed her hands into the air and turned to climb back into her BMW. The other person reached into a pocket and pointed something at Elizabeth’s back. An electric arc flashed.

‘A Taser?’ she and Cord said at the same time.

On the way to the ground, Elizabeth’s head slammed against her window and bounced off her door.