“Unless they weren’t stealing the van for the cargo inside.”

“You mean, like, selling the van for parts?”

“Perhaps. But that doesn’t make any sense, either. A Toyota Camry would be worth a lot more than that van. Why risk going to jail to part out a generic van?”

“Nothing else is missing from your property?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“What did your security cameras show?”

“Isn’t that an interesting question? I checked them first thing. Somehow, all of the security footage for the last twenty-four hours has been erased.”

“That’s weird.”

“And on a hunch, I decided to take a look at the Steady Stare footage. Unfortunately, the drone wasn’t up last night, due to the weather. But do you know what I found?”

“No.”

“Twenty-four hours of video had been wiped away.”

Jack frowned, genuinely confused. “How could that happen?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Jack knew it wasn’t him. But whoever had done it must have known that Jack had accessed that footage last night. He decided to take a chance. “You must have logs of whoever accessed that video yesterday.”

Lian’s eyes examined Jack’s face, searching for a tell. “I don’t suppose you can guess what I discovered?”

“That the logs have been scrubbed, too.”

“Precisely.”

“Someone’s covering their tracks.”

“Yes, they are.” Lian sat forward. “I’ll ask you again: Was it you?”

“No, I can guarantee you, it wasn’t me.”

She sat back, confused. “Then who?”

Good question. Apparently he had a guardian angel. Whoever had deleted the surveillance footage and log-in data probably disposed of the bodies at the warehouse, too, otherwise Lian would’ve mentioned it. Murder was rare in Singapore, and she would have heard about four dead foreign nationals from her police contacts. And if she thought that Jack really had stolen the van, she would’ve had him arrested already, or at least fired from the job. Since neither had happened, she must have had her doubts.

Or maybe she was saving that trump card for later.

Jack decided it was time to deflect and go on the offensive.

“I don’t know if it’s connected, but Paul and I were just looking for a file that has disappeared from the mainframe.”

Lian frowned. “What kind of file?”

Jack had to be careful. He didn’t want to tip his hand, and he didn’t want to offend her. “Just one of the files we needed for our audit.”

“That’s rather vague.”

“Agreed. But it’s an interesting coincidence.”

“Check the mainframe backups for copies.”

You thought of everything, didn’t you? Jack said to himself. “We did. All gone.”

“Maybe it was never there to begin with.”

“It was there, believe me.”

“If it was so important, why didn’t you download and copy it?”