“Hey,” I answered back. He’d been tucked into a cube in the office, though all I’d seen of him was a shaved head and a T-shirt with “Rough Trade” written across the top. As he came closer, I could make out the photo underneath. It looked like an album cover, with two androgynous figures, one in silhouette and the other in a white suit. When we were finally face-to-face, I realized the suited character was a curiously attractive woman.

He noticed me staring at it. “Carole Pope. She’s an icon.”

I didn’t recognize the name, but I nodded. “Cool shirt.”

“Noah sucks,” the guy said, slightly out of breath. “He just called you a bitch and shredded your form.”

“I regret not poking him in the eye. I should go back and take care of that.”

“He gets away with shit on account of being the CEO’s kid brother.” The guy took a couple of breaths. “I really need to get out more. I’m Todd, by the way.”

“Deirdre.”

He handed me a folded sheet of paper. “I printed this for you.”

I unfolded the page. Caroline Crawley—account created April 3, 3:25 p.m.

“That was two weeks before she died,” I said. “What are the other dates on this page?”

“Most people create an account and log in a bunch of times to fine-tune their messages,” Todd said. “Your sister logged in a lot on April third and fourth, checked in on the eleventh, then not again until the fifteenth.”

I scanned them and almost stopped breathing at the last one. “April fifteenth, 5:17 a.m. That’s the day she died.” I stared at him. “You’re telling me my sister wrote this message to me right before she died?”

“She started writing a message to you before that,” Todd said. “I can’t tell you about earlier versions. They’re on a server somewhere, but you really will need a subpoena to get them.”

“Why did I only get her message a week after she died?”

“That was the dead man’s switch.”

“The dead man’s what?” My shock must’ve shown in my face, because Todd took a step back and put a hand up, like he was warding off evil.

“Don’t freak out,” he said. “You never heard that phrase? It’s a security feature, basically a fail-safe. It’s dormant so long as a person is checking in on it, but if they fail to log in within a certain time frame . . . boom. It goes off.”

“The letter went out because my sister didn’t check in?”

“Exactly. Her account was set for a week-long delay.”

My eyes stung as if a thousand invisible hornets were attacking me. “Sorry.” I wiped away a tear. “That’s helpful.”

“The bad news is the dead man’s switch deleted all her files,” Todd said.

“But the police can get that with a subpoena, right?”