I stand and shove the chair back under the desk, turning around only to almost trip over Luke’s tangled bedsheets. For some reason, the unruliness of it all makes me feel itchy. It’s not my room or my bed, but the longer I stare at it, the more anger bubbles in my chest. It’s just a stupid bed, and I don’t want to touch the covers, because who knows when he last washed them, but it’s sitting there, all innocent looking, taunting me, looking just as out of control and unkempt as my life and my current situation. My life may be out of my control, but I can fix how annoyingly messed up Luke’s bed is. Grumbling under my breath, I grab Luke’s sheets and yank them up, only to spot a flash of something on the bed before the sheets fall into place. Throwing the covers all the way off the bed, I find a manila folder in the middle of the mattress, some papers scattered around it, like Luke was looking at it in bed before he got distracted and left to do something else. Or the officers found it and regarded it as nothing of importance in their search. Either way, I’m curious, so I grab the folder and open it to reveal the documents inside. As I make sense of what I’m looking at, a certain page causes me to go still. This can’t be right. I pick it up and realization slams into me as my heart stops.

What?

I feel the blood drain from my face and I can barely remember how to breathe.

Why?

I flip to the next page, the room closes in on me.

How?

My brain can barely process what I’m seeing. My throat tightens.

What? Why? How? The words are on repeat as I hastily shuffle papers around to get a better idea of what I’m looking at, trying to find logic, trying to make sense of this. I stumble through paper after paper, my hands shaking, my breathing coming out fast and shallow, my heartbeat too loud in my ears.

This is not right. I am not seeing this. There’s some kind of mistake.

“Hey, guys! I think I found something!”

Charlotte’s voice brings me back to earth, causing my head to snap over to the door, which is only open by a sliver.

I hastily cram every single paper back into the file and shove it in the bottom drawer of Luke’s desk. I push it down deep, deeper than anything else in there, willing it to go away, to pretend I never found it, to push it out of existence.

Slamming the drawer closed, I straighten but the room spins. I remind myself to breathe.

In and out. In and out.

When I’m convinced I appear normal, I leave the room and go to where Charlotte and Annalisa are standing. They’re holding a crumbled receipt, carefully smoothing it out.

“It was in his jacket pocket,” Charlotte explains, pointing to a part of a receipt. “And it has the same day on it, with a time stamp of 5:16 p.m.”