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“Then let’s get to work.”
I take a seat in the director’s chair. The base is lumpy and the lumbar support—or lack thereof—is so terrible the lower muscles in my back want to scream in agony.
It takes a second for his computer to boot up. It’s big and clunky, something from the early 2000’s that whirs to life with the force of a freaking jet engine. I consider it nothing short of a miracle when the screen actually manages to load, revealing a simple log-in screen. By the look of things, the director uses a four-digit passcode.
I grit my teeth. “This could take a while.”
Nikita hovers beside me, one hand on my shoulder as she leans forward to investigate. “Don’t you have… I don’t know, connections? Do you work with any hackers or something like that?”
“We used to, but he retired a while ago from the business. One of Sandra’s uncles. We’re just going to have to brute force it.”
“That could take all night.”
“We don’t have very many options.”
Nikita looks around the office space. I can practically hear the gears in her head grinding as she attempts to formulate a plan. “He’s an older man,” she mutters aloud. “I’m sure he’s the type to pick a PIN that’s easy to remember, like a birthday or something.”
“Do you know his birthday?”
“No.”
She wanders over to a glass display shelf behind us, browsing through the numerous plaques and awards. She zeroes in on a frame image of the Bolshoi Theatre itself, framed and kept at eye-level—an obvious beloved peace.
“Maybe it’s nothisbirthday,” she mumbles. “Try 1825. The year this place was built.”
I type the numbers in and pressENTER. A little gray circle rotates in the center of the screen, but five seconds later, I’m greeted by the blindingly bright background of rolling pastures on the director’s desktop.
“Good guess,” I say.
Nikita beams. “I honestly didn’t think that would work. Now, where are we supposed to find the footage?”
It’s a great question. The director, in typical old man fashion, has a desktop littered with a hundred different icons. It’s a disorganized mess that causes the knots in my shoulders to tighten.
“Good God, how does anyonelivelike this?” I grumble.
Nikita taps the screen gently, her vision far sharper than mine for a singular, obvious reason. “Here. I think this is it.”
I click on the folder and it, too, is just as much of a mess as the director’s shitstorm of a home screen. No wonder his computer is already overheating despite being on for less than five minutes. There are thousands of hours of surveillance footage backed up to this single folder, dating as far back as five years ago. Why in the ever-loving hell would someone keep this much video on a single hard drive? I can chalk it up to his advanced age and general ignorance—butholy shitit’s a miracle his computer hasn’t caught fire.
I click on one video, a recording from earlier this morning, scrubbing through and pausing when I spot even a blur of movement. It always ends up being nothing, though.
“This is going to take forever,” Nikita grumbles, understandably irritated.
I frown when I spot something inconsistent in the folder. “A few dates are missing.”
“What?”
“November second, November fifteenth, and yesterday.”
Nikita’s eyes widen. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“November second is the day Vanya’s shoes were tampered with. November fifteenth was when I found razors in my shoes—”
Alarm lances through me. “Fuckingwhatin your shoes?”
“Oh, I might have forgotten to tell you.”
