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She had to.
“Besides,” Hawk said, “Ella was with me on Christmas Eve.”
I wanted to hug him for vouching for me. He wasn’t leaving me alone in this.
“Yes,” I said, sounding too eager. “What about that feed? Can you bring that up? We were together!”
Ethan clicked through a few things. Images sped up, showcasing Hawk walking me from the elevator to the door.
“Hm. It appears that’s true. But look at the timestamp,” he said, frowning and returning his attention to the theft feed.
“This footage happened long after Mr. Danielson walked you out. Did you perhaps come back to the building?”
“Does the feed show me coming back?” I asked.
Had whoever did this tweaked to add me there too?
“No,” Ethan said.
Panic surged in my chest and brought a dull, hounding pain behind my eyes. “I didn’t. I swear, I didn’t. I went home. I fell asleep and then got up again a few hours later to go to the hospital.”
Hawk and Ethan both watched me. My breath hitched. I felt sick as all kinds of awful possibilities swept through my brain too quickly for me to catch.
“I was at home asleep,” I added helplessly. “I wasn’t here.”
They had to believe me.
The bald security guard rose from the desk. “I know this is difficult,” he said kindly. “Can we search your locker, Ella?”
I was astonished. I’d come here to clean it out, though I hadn’t made it that far.
All I had was a bag of some toiletry items, deodorant hair brush, spare socks, that kind of thing. I had nothing to hide.
“Yes, search it.” Then we could move past this. I was so hurt, so shocked.
The pain behind my eyes increased its tapping pressure.
Ethan stood and closed the windows of his computer screen. He strode toward the door. Hawk followed, but desperately, I grabbed his hand.
Fortunately, he didn’t pull away.
“Hawk, I swear, I didn’t do this. I would never.”
“I can’t believe you did, either,” he said. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this, okay?”
My nod was shaky. Shallow breaths were all I could accomplish.
“Okay.”
Together, the three of us left the security offices and rode the elevator to the lower level in uncomfortable silence.
It was absolute agony.
“Is everything all right?” Stina asked, rising from her desk as we entered. Pris and Charlotte were there too.
Pris smirked, but Charlotte’s eyes widened warily.
“Can you please vacate the room?” Ethan asked. “There’s something we need to check.”
