Nate goes still. When he blinks his gaze back into focus, I expect him to nod in agreement, but instead he shakes his head. “That’s not enough. She twisted it with me, tried to make it seem like she was paying you out of guilt for getting you fired. She can twist it with the cops too.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I say, blowing out a hard breath. “We need that tape.”

I bite my lip, and we’re both silent for a while, still thinking.

“Let’s go downstairs and talk to Raul,” Nate says. “If Taylor was here that day, maybe he remembers.”

I nod fast and slip into the closest pair of shoes I can find. Just after the elevator doors slide open, painstakingly slow, Nate reaches for my hand, and I slip my palm into his. The past few weeks have been rocky, emotional, intense. But this, his skin against mine, is so calming. He tightens his grip when our palms touch, but squeezes even harder as he leads me out of the elevator.

Raul is happy to help. Nate pulls up a photo from Taylor’s Instagram and angles it so Raul can check it out and see if he remembers her coming into the building recently. It’s the most true-to-life one we could find. Most of them are too doctored, whether it’s FaceTune or professional airbrushing. He inspects the image with squinted eyes like maybe he should be wearing glasses, then shakes his head. “I can’t say. Girls like that are a dime a dozen these days, you know? They all look the same.”

Nate and I exchange a quick glance. I reach for the phone and scroll to a photo of Taylor and Mei posing together on a boat, arms around each other. Raul leans closer to the screen, but before his eyes tighten again, he’s nodding.

“You’ve seen her here?” Nate asks, pointing to Mei.

“She fell on some glass or something. She was cut pretty bad. I tried to get her to let me call an ambulance, but she called a car service. Said she didn’t want to ride in an ambulance.” He shrugs. “It costs five hundred a pop. I get it.”

I laugh, a harsh, bitter sound. “That girl has five-star insurance. That’s not why she didn’t want you calling the ambulance.”

Nate leans in closer. “What happened exactly? Was she alone?”

“Yeah. Some girl came in saying she saw this girl outside bleeding. I looked up and saw her on the ground. Blood was everywhere, so I rushed out trying to help her. That’s when I offered to get her the ambulance.”

I nod. “How long were you outside?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Few minutes tops.”

But a few minutes is all the time Taylor would have needed, especially if she had help.

I run both hands over my hair. “Do you have camera footage of people who came in and out this day?”

“Of course,” Raul says. “Want me to show you?”