“Look closer,” Vance said. “There should be an option for backup verification.”

I clicked the drop-down menu.

My old recovery email was listed as an alternative.

“Send it there,” Vance said.

I clicked the button and opened my inbox on my phone.

A six-digit code appeared.

I read it aloud to him. “Four, eight, nine, zero, two, one.”

Vance typed it in quickly.

The green text on his screen began to scroll rapidly, line after line of code flashing by.

“We are in the directory,” Vance said, his voice flat. “But the file from today isn’t in the main folder.”

“Daniel must have purged it,” I said, clenching my jaw.

“He purged the pointer file,” Vance corrected. “The actual data is still sitting in the temporary cache.”

He reached for his coffee and took a slow sip.

“This is going to take a few minutes to reconstruct,” he said. “The video blocks are fragmented.”

“How fragmented?” I asked.

“Like a puzzle,” he said. “The camera records in three-minute segments. He edited out about ninety seconds in the middle.”

“The ninety seconds where Patricia attacked me,” I said.