I reached out in the dark, my hand brushing against the keyboard.

I tapped the spacebar.

The monitor didn’t wake up.

I felt along the back of the terminal, my fingers searching for the USB port.

My thumb brushed against the plastic casing of my own flash drive.

I had initiated a local mirror backup of the network traffic logs just before the system crashed.

I pulled the drive out and slipped it into my pocket.

My hands were shaking as I pulled my phone from my waistband.

The screen lit up, casting a harsh blue glow over my face.

I plugged the flash drive into the phone’s adapter.

My forensic accounting software took a few seconds to load the mirrored data.

I sat on the floor, my back against the desk, and began to work.

Numbers were my shield.

When Derek used to scream at me, I would escape into the silent logic of spreadsheets.

Now, that same logic was the only thing that could save Vincent.

I bypassed the encrypted system logs and went straight for the financial ledger packets.