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Sandra slid Nate’s church key into the lock and then slipped into the cool, dark, empty building. She’d never trespassed before and felt extra guilty that her first foray into the crime was a church—her own church, no less. She fervently hoped the church angel wasn’t watching. Did it count as breaking and entering if she didn’t steal anything? She feared so. It was a moot point, however, because if she found what she was looking for, she planned to take it.
She knew from general church scuttlebutt that the master key that unlocked the outside door also unlocked most of the doors in the building, except for the pastor’s office and the treasurer’s office. That was okay. She didn’t think she needed to go into either of those rooms. She gave her eyes time to adjust to the dim light provided by the emergency exit signs and then headed for the secretary’s office door. In seconds she was inside. Thank goodness Nate frequently volunteered for youth group activities; this mission would be far more difficult without his key. She looked around the neat but cluttered office. She quickly spotted the small television screen, which was turned off, but she didn’t see a box of tapes anywhere. Maybe she’d been watching too many old detective shows. Maybe New Hope’s security footage was digital. She groaned, which sounded freakily loud in the silence. She continued her search, but as the tapes didn’t appear, she grew more and more sure that there were no tapes. She turned to confront the secretary’s computer. Sandra wasn’t a computer whiz. Was it even worth turning it on?
She hadn’t come this far to just give up. She looked for the computer’s on button and learned that it already was on. It was just sleeping. She jiggled the ergonomically-correct mouse and the screen sprang to life, blinding her with its brightly lit password request. Shoot. But then she saw a combination of letters and numbers taped to the bottom of the computer screen. No way it could be that easy?
But it was. She was soon inside the belly of all things New Hope. Sunday school curricula, bulletin templates, and schedules galore. The desktop was full of icons, one of which read “Cameras.” She opened the file folder and found several thousand video files stretching back years. That was a lot of empty parking lot footage. She was beyond grateful to learn the files were organized by date, and she quickly scrolled down to locate the footage from that fateful Saturday night. Then she scrolled back up. Then down. It wasn’t there. There was a video for Friday and the following Monday, but nothing for that Saturday or Sunday. She scanned the other dates to see if missing videos was a common occurrence, but it wasn’t. On a hunch, she checked for the Tuesday when she’d first seen Phoneix, and that recording was missing too. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Someone had deleted three days’ worth of footage? Who could have done that?
Anyone could have done it. She’d just proved that their church wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. It occurred to her that she could delete the current day’s footage that showed her sneaking into the church after dark, but she decided she’d crossed enough ethical lines for one day. She closed the folder, hoped the computer would go back to sleep soon, and then sneaked out of the office, taking care to lock the door behind her. Then she was outside, making sure she didn’t look directly at the security cameras and hurrying to Nate’s car, which she’d parked out of their view. And then she was on her way home, her small guilt about what she’d just done completely dwarfed by her curiosity. She’d assumed that the police hadn’t asked for the videos, but maybe they had? But even if they had, that didn’t mean they would have been deleted, did it? Wouldn’t they just have copied the videos? No, she was sure the police hadn’t yet asked for the videos. They’d only just taken custody of the bats that evening, so unless they’d had another reason to suspect the killer was someone from the church, she doubted they’d made the leap yet.
She resisted the urge to swing through the Dunkin drive through for a sweet treat and was almost back to her driveway when Bob appeared in the seat beside her. She shrieked, and the car swerved toward the ditch as she stared at him.
“Keep it on the road!” he cried, bracing himself with one hand on the dash.
She straightened the car out and then opened her mouth to ask him why he was trying to kill her, but before she could speak, he told her to pull over.
“Pull over? You just told me to keep it on the road!”
“Pull over right now!”
She slowed and pulled the car onto the dirt shoulder. It always made her nervous when he injected his voice with angel authority.