Fake Me To Church

Chapter 16.2 - The Glory of Kings

- AHMED -

The paling afternoon light hung in the air all around us as we stepped out of Steven's truck and headed up the sidewalk to Molding the Way. Steven pressed open the glassy double doors, and I trailed him inside, following his lead to the caramel brown check-in desk made of polished wood.

"Hi," Steven said with confidence. "Me and my friend are here to pick up some stuff for my dad."

"Oh, yes, of course," replied the dainty lady stationed behind the desk. "Anything I can help you with, or—?"

"I think we've got it," Steven said. "Just some files he left in the back office and—oh! Look at that." He shook his head and patted his thighs. "I must've forgotten Dad's keys at home again. Mind if I borrow yours? It'll only take a second."

"Why, of course." Her vocal trill seemed almost unreal. She pulled open a drawer lining the desk's underside and rummaged around. After a brief search, she retrieved a gold-colored, singly ridged key with the name Hall imprinted on the side.

"Thanks, Callie." Steven shot her a warm smile, then motioned with a single nod of the head for me to follow him past the desk, toward a set of winding stairs that I'd never noticed before.

"Okay, that was too easy," I muttered under my breath.

"Whatever," he said in a dismissive tone. "Perks of being a preacher's kid, I guess."

Once we'd trekked past the staircase, we arrived at a set of smooth double doors with golden handles. The door posts shone beneath the ceramic overhead lights; the wood looked fresh, unblemished, brand new—and such a far cry from the rest of Molding the Way.

Nothing but the best for Marcus Hall.

Steven glanced left and right, then inched opened the doors standing before us. I followed him inside, checking over my shoulder as I plodded inside the mysterious room.

The first thing I noticed was the leathery, mahogany smell. It was fresh and crisp, and the entire room just felt stately, distinguished...isolated. I fumbled in the dark, dragging my hands along the smoothness of the walls in search of a light switch.

Brightness flooded the room seconds later, Steven clicking on a lamp beside the main office desk. He took a seat in a burgundy chair embroidered with gold rims and wiggled the computer mouse in front of the large desktop monitor.

"I'm ninety-nine percent sure this is where they keep the camera footage," he said to me as I walked closer. "Found it." He double-clicked the mouse and angled the monitor so I could see.

"Wow," I mumbled, leaning my head in closer. "Is that it?" I pointed to a video file. "It's got today's date on it."

"Nah." Steven shook his head. "They don't offload the recordings for the previous day until the secretary gets here. Anything that happened before seven o'clock this morning'll be stored on yesterday's video file." He tapped the mouse once, bathing the screen in black and white.

"So what, then? Do we just scroll to the end, or—?"

"Not unless you wanna miss everything," he bit back. "It was after two a.m. when I finally got back to my house, so let's start at one-thirty." He dragged the mouse forward, releasing at last when the image of the lobby clock in the video looked to be at around 1:25 a.m. He clicked a drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the screen and selected the option 4x Scrubbing, sending the video into a fast-forward frenzy.

We sat there for one minute, two minutes, three minutes.

Five.

Ten.