Time Stands Still

Chapter 20

"That's just a plant," Aria said.

I blinked. "What?"

"The person, it's just a plant." The tension left my body as I watched Simona loosen up as well. We followed Aria into the corridor and when we did pass the figure, it was indeed a palm tree. I could see how Simona thought that it could have a human. A human with a very large afro that was slightly droopy.

As we approached the office, his door came into view. The large oak door looked more sinister in the dark. The grooves on the door almost seemed to turn into some kind of demonic creature. I shuddered slightly.

Simona handed the keycard to Aria. With bated breath, I watched as Aria placed the card underneath the metallic door handle. A beep was heard. My throat felt dry as Aria's hand pushed the door handle down. Slowly the door was cracked open.

Three loud exhales were heard. Aria walked into his office first, followed by Simona and then by me.

His office was rather simplistic. There was a desk with a narrow computer screen with a keyboard on it in the middle of the room. A black bookcase was sitting on one side of the wall, filled with books about engineering. The other wall just held a painting of a lemon.

The view from the large window that faced the door was probably the most spectacular thing about the office. Almost the whole city of Seattle with all its colorful lights was able to be seen from his office window despite it being on the sixth floor.

"I'll start the computer," Aria whispered.

I nodded as I continued to look outside. Suddenly the room was lit up blue by the computer screen. I quickly looked down to make sure that nobody was walking there. It would not end well for us if somebody noticed us trespassing.

"Come, look," Aria told Simona and me. We quickly walked towards the computer screen where Aria was opening the folders.

It didn't take her long to locate my folder. He had  named it Audrey Massey. Aria clicked on various documents. My mind blanked out as I read them. I had always suspected that he had been involved, but to actually get proof... That was certainly something different.

There was a document about how he had paid a mechanic to screw something to ruin the hydraulics of the plane that crashed. Another document was about the payments to the prisons in Ohio. He also had a document about my mom with whom he had contact with until last year. I couldn't believe that I was finally getting the proof.

"So what should we do?" Aria asked as she turned to look at me. "I could print it out, but I mean that could go wrong. We can send the emails to ourselves, but he could probably trace it back to us. What's the best option?"

As soon as the last words had passed her lips, an idea had popped into my head. "Let's take out his hard drive."

"Okaaaay," Aria said. "How do you want to take out his hard drive?"

"With a screwdriver," I answered.

"But we don't have a screwdriver."

Both Simona and I pulled a screwdriver out of our bags. Aria stared at us with a frown on her face, while I had to silently laugh.

"Why do you guys have a screwdriver?" Aria asked.

"Work," both Simona and I said at the same time, causing me to laugh silently again. Of course, Simona used the screwdriver for a different purpose. She used it to defend herself if necessary and I used it to break into things.

I turned the CPU to the side and started to loosen the screws. It went very quickly since it was definitely not the first time that I had to get a hard drive out of a computer. Although every CPU looked slightly different, the hard drive was generally always easy to locate.