Page 103 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘Yell if you find anything,’ Jet called to him.

‘Yeah, you too,’ his voice floated back, Jet smiling as she caught it.

She turned back to the screen. Where first? She clicked onDocumentsand about fifty blue file icons filled the page. Hmm, this could take a while.

Instead, Jet clicked on the little magnifying glass to bring up the search bar.

Coleby hammer,she typed into it, frustrated at how slow it was, typing with one hand, and her weaker hand at that.

Pressed enter.

No results.

JustColeby, deletinghammer.

No results.

Fuck it, fine, wasn’t going to be that easy. Not a document that said,Oh hey, Jet, I see you’re looking for your murder weapon. Here’s a handy little order form with the exact employee who owns that tool kit.

The hard way, then.

She clicked on a folder namedImportant Work Files, thenFinances, then2025, then kept going, clicking through an entire Russian doll of folders, each one eaten by the last.

Eventually she found an Excel spreadsheet calledOctober 2025 Payroll,last edited a few days ago. Double-clicked to open it up, dragged it over to the larger monitor.

She rubbed one eye and then the other with her left hand, tried to read the screen, even though every letter and number had more edges than they should.

It helped when she squinted, sharpened it a little.

A list of employees’ names down the left-hand side, starting with those who worked full-time in the office, Scott Mason and Luke Mason at the very top, moving down through names Jet recognized to ones she didn’t: the contractors. Their salary or pay rate. Hours worked. Any overtime. Then a highlighted column forGross Pay, the total amount at the bottom.

Jet scanned the list of names for Henry Lim. He wasn’t on here. But there was another name missing too, nagging at the back of Jet’s mind, she was sure. No, she wasn’t. She went back over the list of names, those who worked in the office, these desks right in front of her, these people she knew, many since she was a kid. Under her dad and her brother there was Carl, yes, Maria, yes, Amal, yes. Jet’s eyes skipped ahead. Wait, where was Angie? Angie Rice? She’d worked at the company for over twenty years. Had she retired and Jet missed it? Her name wasn’t here.

Jet used her elbow, rolled away from the desk, pushed herself to her feet.

She grabbed her flashlight and stumbled out of Luke’s corner, crashing into Carl’s desk with the arm she couldn’t feel, searching. Scanning the desks with her eyes and her light.

Not that one.

No, that’s Amal’s.

Didn’t know this person, must be new.

Here.

The flashlight reflected off the dead computer screen, and then off something else. A photo frame propped up on the desk, beside a pot of pens.

Jet put the flashlight in her mouth, between her teeth, and picked up the frame.

It was Angie Rice, grinning at the camera, her arms around her two grandkids.

‘Knew it,’ Jet whispered to herself, awkward with her teeth gritted around the flashlight. She put the frame back, the light catching something else.

A Post-it note, stuck to the monitor screen:Angie – can you get back to Reid about the new designs on Maple?

Angie Ricedidstill work here; this was her desk. So why was her name not on the payroll last month?

Jet hurried back to Luke’s desk, back to the screen. She studied the list of names again, going through them all, pressing her finger to each cell of the spreadsheet, checking them off.

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