Page 30 of Just Now

Meanwhile, Cami’s fingers were flying over the keyboard. How much footage remained? Had some of it been transferred? She had no idea how long it would have taken. It was a large amount of data, but the program she’d used would have compressed it, allowing it to be sent in the fastest timeframe.

She let out a breath, shaking her head. The footage on the computer here was permanently deleted. He’d set the tape to wipe itself clean, starting from the earliest records to the later ones. There were only a few minutes of footage available, which had been recorded in real time after the wipe, and showed one of the bar’s patrons strolling out and heading for his motorcycle.

“It’s gone,” she said, and saw Connor’s jaw tighten. The barman, meanwhile, looked grimly pleased.

“I’m sorry about the footage. I didn’t know you needed it,” he said.

“Oh yes you did. We told you we needed it as soon as we walked in,” Connor threatened.

Had she gotten any in her cloud storage?

She pressed keys on her phone, hoping they had something, anything.

And she was rewarded with a long sequence of data that caused her to sigh in relief as she interpreted it.

“Luckily, I accessed the system and ran a cloud backup a few minutes ago. It got almost everything,” she told Connor. “It looks like the only missing data is from yesterday afternoon onward. We don’t have those last few hours, but we have everything else. Everything, going back four months, which is the full length of the recording capacity.”

The barman stared at her, eyes goggling, looking horrified by this news.

“What?” he said incredulously. “How did you do that? What about privacy issues? How dare you steal my footage!”

“Good work,” Connor praised her. “For that, and the alarm. Well done.” Then he turned to the barman, speaking in a very different tone.

“We’re bringing you in,” he said, picking up his phone and calling for backup.

*

The barman, who had been identified as Michael Shores, the owner of Endpoint, looked wretchedly guilty.

Watching from the observation window outside the interview room as she linked her phone to her laptop to retrieve the footage, Cami noted that he couldn’t meet Connor’s stare. Instead, he was glowering down at the desk where he sat, with his wrists handcuffed to the steel loops. Connor was clearly all out of patience with his sabotage attempts. He had a hard look on his face as he stared at the barman.

They had gone to the closest police station, to save time. The observation room where Cami was stationed had a one-way glass window on the right-hand wall, but on the left, its window looked out over a sports field, with a wooded area beyond.

And in front of her, on the screen, was the footage that could provide them with answers.

While Connor was face to face with Michael Shores, Cami was letting her programs run, feeling thankful that she’d managed to obtain it.

“Tell me why you tried to delete this footage, Mr. Shores!” Connor demanded. Waiting for her programs to run, Cami glanced sideways toward the window, where the barman was shuffling his feet uneasily.

“I didn’t think it was important,” the barman mumbled, avoiding eye contact.

“You didn’t think it was important to comply with a request from law enforcement?” Connor asked incredulously.

“I was just trying to protect myself,” the barman muttered, his eyes darting around the room. “I didn’t want any trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Connor pressed.

The barman didn’t answer, but his silence spoke volumes.

“You’re going to give us answers. I don’t care how long we sit here. But you’re not leaving until you give us the truth,” Connor threatened.

“There’s nothing to be found. I’m an innocent man. I’m allowed to make space on my footage recordings. We were going to get new tapes today.”

“Then why not give us the old ones, Mr. Shores?”

Again, silence hung heavy in the air as the barman looked away.

Cami could feel the tension in the room, even from behind the glass. But it didn’t look as if there would be an easy resolution. The barman’s mouth was clamped shut.

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