Chapter 8

"Break into her cloud," Justice ordered, his voice breaking the heavy silence in the tech room.

Alex's fingers flew across the keyboard. Lines of code cascaded down his monitor.

Kylee, officially cleared of suspicion by her own deduction, rubbed her stiff wrists where Leland had almost cuffed her. She walked up behind Alex's chair.

"I can't get in," Alex said, sweat beading on his forehead. "Her personal drive is locked behind a military-grade encryption algorithm. It would take a supercomputer ten years to brute-force this."

Leland let out a loud, obnoxious sigh from the corner. "Well, there goes your brilliant sci-fi story, Doctor. No proof, no case."

Kylee ignored him. She closed her eyes.

The sound of Dana's final, desperate breath echoed in her mind.

Curtain call.

Why did she say the distress word if she was the one pulling the strings? She wasn't calling for rescue. She was leaving a key.

Kylee's eyes snapped open. She leaned over Alex's shoulder and placed her fingers on the keyboard.

She typed a complex alphanumeric string: the exact latitude and longitude of the biology lab where they first met, cross-referenced with the hexadecimal code for the color of the Blue Morpho butterfly. It was an inside joke only a sociopathic mind and a desperate victim would share.

The computer let out a sharp beep. The red progress bar instantly turned green.

The encryption dissolved.

Alex gasped. He immediately mirrored the decrypted drive to the main projector screen.

A single, massive folder sat in the center of the screen. It was titled: The Script.

Alex clicked it open.

The screen flooded with documents. There were AI voice-generation files, deep-fake software, and highly detailed floor plans of Darius's penthouse.

Alex clicked on an audio file.

Dana's voice filled the room, but it was digitally altered to sound exactly like Darius's executive assistant. She was leaving a voicemail for Damion, taunting him about Cinnamon and Darius.

Alex clicked a video file.

It was hidden camera footage from Dana's own living room. It showed Dana, her face bruised and exhausted, carefully placing the Italian leather shoes in her closet and dropping the Zippo lighter into the couch cushions.

The final document was a manifesto. A step-by-step psychological breakdown of how to manipulate a violent narcissist into becoming a murder weapon.

Justice felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. It was the most calculating, ruthless thing he had ever seen.

Leland's smug expression vanished. He stood frozen, staring at the screen, his mouth slightly open.

"Wait, there's one more thing," Alex said, scrolling to the bottom.

It was a scheduled email, sent automatically upon her death. The recipient was the largest domestic violence women's shelter in New York State.

The attached bank statements showed that Dana had liquidated her entire trust fund, sold all her jewelry, and anonymously wired over four million dollars to the shelter.

The heavy doors of the tech room swung open. Police Chief Preston Royce-Howard Jr. marched in, his face red with stress.

He looked at the screen, then at Justice.

"Close the case," the Chief ordered gruffly. "Pin the murders on Hatfield. Rule Garner a tragic suicide. The press will eat it up. We are not releasing this... this supervillain manifesto to the public. It makes the department look incompetent."

Kylee stared at the final line of Dana's manifesto: I am finally free.

Her chest tightened. A physical pain, sharp and jagged, ripped through her ribs.

Her perfect, mechanical mind-the mind that scored a 100% on the FBI psych eval-was short-circuiting.

She was a genius at reading the dead. But she had been completely blind to the living hell her best friend was enduring right in front of her.

Kylee turned around. She pushed past the Chief, her steps stumbling slightly. She shoved the heavy doors open and practically ran down the hallway.

"Kylee!" Justice yelled. He pointed a finger at Mickey. "Bag all this evidence."

Justice sprinted after her.

He caught up to her in the dimly lit underground parking garage.

Kylee was leaning heavily against the driver's side door of her SUV. Her hands were pressed hard over her face.

She wasn't making a sound. Her body went completely rigid, her breathing shallow and unnaturally rhythmic, like a machine entering a critical failure state. The perfect simulation of human emotion she wore every day was completely short-circuiting.

Justice didn't say a word. He walked up to her, stripped off his heavy suit jacket, and draped it over her trembling shoulders.

Then, he wrapped his large arms around her, pulling her stiff, unyielding frame against his chest.

Kylee didn't hug him back; her fingers remained locked in a frozen, claw-like grip at her sides, her eyes staring blankly into the dark, acting as the only physical anchor keeping her fractured psyche tethered to reality.