“Yes,” I said. “My brother Daniel sent a clipped version of the video to the hospital board this afternoon.”

“Which means they deleted the original file from the primary library to hide the edit,” Vance muttered.

“Can you get the raw file back?” I asked.

“Most people think deleting a file from a cloud library removes it instantly,” Vance said. “It doesn’t.”

He plugged a grey cable from his laptop into mine.

“The system caches raw video files on a partition for up to thirty days to prevent accidental loss,” he explained.

“But the user interface doesn’t show that partition,” I said.

“Correct,” Vance said. “You need to access the developer API using the master recovery email.”

He tapped a sequence of keys, and a black window with green text appeared on his screen.

“Enter your recovery email and password here,” he said, sliding the laptop toward me.

My fingers were stiff as I typed in the credentials.

I pressed enter.

A red box appeared on the screen: *Two-Factor Authentication Required.*

“It’s going to send a code to the primary phone number on the account,” I said, my heart dropping. “That’s Patricia’s phone.”