It was a grainy picture, colors muted by the darkness, but she could clearly see the boy Riley approach stealthily, eyes and teeth shining out of his blackened face. The blade in his hand was visible too, just the top edge where the soot failed to cover it.

Suddenly the screen glowed green, and Riley’s features were underlit like a Halloween campfire storyteller. The boy looked pretty guilty, it had to be said: sneaking into an old man’s house in the dead of night, armed with a wicked-looking blade. The alert changed from green to red as Riley drew closer, and the view flipped as Professor Smart sat up.

There was a little chitchat, which was impossible to make out, then Riley struck and everything went orange. End of story. QED, the check’s in the mail, the prosecution rests.

Or does it?

Chevie freeze-framed the moment when Riley lunged. It seemed a little weird. Chevie knew all about knife fights, and the boy’s stance seemed off to her. He was leaning backward while moving forward. This was not an easy thing to do. Also, the look on his face was pure horror.

Either this kid is schizophrenic, or he had a little help.

But there was no one else in the dark room. No one that she could see, at any rate.

Chevie was tempted to pound the ancient hardware.

Alt-tech, my butt. I can’t even clean up the image a little.

Then Chevie had an idea: maybe she couldn’t clean up the image on this box of bolts, but if she could transfer it...

Chevie pulled her smartphone from her waistband and took an HD shot of the screen. Simply transferring the image to her phone seemed to sharpen it up a bit, but it was still dark and fuzzy.

Dark and fuzzy, not a problem.

Chevie had no fewer than four photo manipulation apps on her phone, and she selected one to run the picture through.

In a way it was therapeutic to have such a mundane task to perform, which could momentarily help her to pretend she was working on a normal case.

She ordered the phone to sharpen, lighten, and boost color.

It took a few seconds, then another person appeared from the shadows, behind Riley to the right. A tall man, slightly bent, with dark, close-set eyes that were devoid of expression, like those of a corpse. The face was bland, made more so by the soot smeared across his features, and Chevie couldn’t imagine ladies ever swooning before this guy, but the eyes gave him away. Chevie had seen those dead eyes before, on the faces of serial killers in the Quantico files.

Chevie shivered.

So that’s what it feels like when your blood runs cold, she thought. I’ve heard the expression but never understood it.