I’d looked up how to break into an apartment on YouTube. Of course, the tutorials were designed for people who’d locked themselves out of their own apartments. But I’d studied how to open a door with a laminated credit card, and it was time to put my two-hour education to the test. I reached up to test the handle and let out a gasp as the door opened easily in my hand before I got anywhere near it with the card.

I paused, unsure if I should believe my luck. In my search, I’d read that most burglaries happened during the day, through unlocked front doors, but I couldn’t believe that there were people who actually didn’t lock their doors in the middle of Chicago. As I stepped inside, I let out a sigh of relief that Reg Bolton was one of them.

I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it, breathing heavily. I felt an immense amount of guilt wash over me as I stood in his apartment, his home. But I pushed it away and began looking around for the laptop where he’d said he stored the files.

I moved quickly through the living room and the kitchen, but there was nothing there. At the far end of the kitchen was the door to the bedroom, and I walked inside slowly, the weight of my intrusion on his personal space making my stomach turn. I was considering turning around when I saw the laptop, right there in the middle of his dresser. I walked over to it quickly and opened it, moving my finger across the mouse pad.

The desktop loaded almost immediately, and I thanked the password gods that he hadn’t protected it. His background was a picture of his puppy, but it was absolutely covered in file folders and icons.

Shit.

I leaned closer to the computer and scanned them, looking for anything that stood out. I found the folder a few minutes later: U-CAM37S.

I opened it, and there was a list of recordings from the past two weeks. I wondered if he’d just started recording then, or if he’d been deleting them to save space. I scrolled through the list and found the one from Saturday. Sure enough, like the other recordings, it was exactly four hours long.

What did you cut, Emma?

I double-clicked it, and the video opened up. It was the familiar shot of the dog park, highlighted in the night by the large streetlights that surrounded it. I moved the video forward to the end, but there was nothing there in the last ten seconds, just more footage of the same. Which meant she’d cut from somewhere earlier in the video.