Page 46 of Girl, Empty

11:36 AM: CRITICAL - Atmospheric Sensor Malfunction - Vault Module.

‘So, he spammed alerts within a ten minute window.And then Grayson got to the building when?’

‘Logs show him entering just before midnight.He only lives ten minutes away.’

'But the bank vault.It was on a time lock, according to the manager, and David Lorraine said the same thing.The killer had toopenthe vault for Grayson to get in, because even Grayson couldn’t open it with the time lock, right?’

‘I believe so.’

Ella began to wear a hole in floor with her sudden pacing.She couldn’t explain anything here, and she felt foolish for even trying.She grabbed the back of Riggs’s chair and stared at the screenshots from Mark Miller’s app in front of her.She looked at it, but couldn’tsee.It all just looked like a collage of colors and text and security terms.

The time in bottom corner of the app read: 18:36.

It was small text, hidden in a little green square.

She stopped.

That didn’t seem right.

‘Riggs, what time did Miller send those screenshots to you?’

‘Not long after we interviewed him.About half past nine, maybe?’

Half past nine.The timer read just after half past six.

That was a nine hour difference.

‘Did Miller say that he could open the bank vault from his app?’

‘No.The vault is completely locked down.The only thing opening it is a nuclear bomb.’

What had David Lorraine said?There was no such thing as impossible, just things that looked impossible.There was always some simple explanation, and it was usually so obvious that most people looked right past it.

‘Ugh,’ she sighed.A spark of understanding ignited in her stomach, then grew into an inferno as everything clicked into place.A part of this whole mess suddenly made sense, and while it might only have been one jigsaw piece in the puzzle, at least it was something.

The killer hadn’t manipulated the lock.

He’d manipulated time.

She tapped the culprit on the screen.‘That’s how our unsub got into the bank vault.He just changed the time.When Grayson was in the bank, the Sentinel app thought it was 8 AM.’

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Times like this, Ella wished she smoked.Or had some self-destructive vice that would clear the cobwebs for just a few minutes.

She was leaning against the wall around the back of the precinct, just past the porch area where the security guard from Morrison had smoked himself silly.She could see some of his cigarette butts in the ashtray and briefly entertained the idea of bumming a lighter and sparking some of them up.

No.That would be disgusting.Thankfully, Ripley appeared on the porch for a moment of brief distraction.

‘Dark, it’s freezing out here.’

‘It’s good for the skin, apparently.’

‘So..?’Ripley climbed down the porch and joined Ella on a patch of asphalt that overlooked a staff parking lot.‘You know what I realized earlier?In all these years, I’ve never asked ‘what the Ell is wrong with you?’

‘Good one, but do you really need to ask?We’re out of our depth here.This isn’t a job for us.’

‘Are you out of your mind?This is absolutely a job for us.’