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He parked the rental in one of the few designated visitor spaces and walked up to the front door. A moment later, he was buzzed into a small office. Behind a counter sat a receptionist: a short-haired blonde in her twenties. “How can I help you, sir?” She had a husky voice. A sign on the counter identified her as Amy Scardino.

“Good morning, Amy. Paul Brightman up from New York City. I’m ready to look at the boxes ordered by my firm, AGF LLC.”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?”

“Paul Brightman. AGF LLC. We placed an order for a retrieval.”

“I don’t think we received any retrieval request. We weren’t expecting anyone this morning.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said in a voice that made clear he wasn’t at all sorry, “but we dealt with a ‘Tim.’” He had gotten the name “Tim O’Brien” from the Hudson DataVault website, under “Our Team.” Tim was a “customer experience specialist.” He was who someone from Galkin’s firm would have emailed to request that a certain box of files be retrieved from the vault.

“Tim O’Brien?”

“That sounds right. My admin made the appointment, but I believe that’s the name she mentioned.”

“One moment.” She clicked a button on her phone and said, “Tim, we have someone here from—who are you with again, sir?” She had long blue-painted fingernails.

“AGF.”

“AGF. He says they ordered a retrieval of some files?” A pause. Looking at Paul: “Sir, he never received any such email.” Paul noticed she said “he” and not “we.” That was good.

“That’s troubling,” Paul said, allowing a twinge of irritation to color his voice. “I just drove two hours up from the city . . .”

“I know, I’m sorry, sir.”

“Well, can we please retrieve the files now? I know it’ll take some time, and I’m willing to wait.” He paused a beat, lowered his voice. “I don’t mean to sound like a prick, Amy, but I’m not driving two hours back without setting eyes on those files.”

He had watched any number of promotional videos on YouTube for Hudson DataVault: a virtual tour of the old limestone mine that had been converted into high-tech storage space, interviews with a customer experience specialist and the CEO. So he knew what Tim wanted: the number of the file carton, that was all. Every carton had an RFID label. Each label had an RFID serial number. Paul didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but he figured he didn’t have to know. What he did have was a file box number, which he’d gotten in a search, back at the office, of AGF’s offsite records database.

He read the file number from the notecard on which he’d jotted it down.

“It can take upward of an hour to get your files,” Amy said, and he knew he was in.