My Ex's Uncle, My Trap novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Night Shift

I typed back with glitter on my thumbs.

Why are you telling me?

The dots came and went.

Because you asked me in front of everybody and I didn't know. I should know. My name is on it.

Then, a minute later:

Delete this number.

I didn't delete it. I saved it as DON'T SCREENSHOT.

Then I stood in the pirate room and made myself think like a locksmith.

If one door is welded shut, you check the other doors.

"Dakota," I said into my headset. "Where do the camera recordings go?"

"Uh. The cloud? Heaven? Why?"

"Because I built half the Nautilus on our back bench. Every Sunday from October to March. And there's a camera dome right over it."

Dakota came out of the control room so fast she tripped on the cord of her headset.

"Oh my God," she said. "You're on tape."

"I'm on eight months of tape."

By 12:30, the whole night crew was in the control room.

The theater kid who runs our lights. The retired machinist who builds our props, back for his reading glasses. Dakota. Me.

"The new system only keeps thirty days," the theater kid said, scrolling. "Then it writes over itself."

"The old system didn't," I said. "The old one had drives. Big gray ones. In the closet."

We opened the closet.

There was a mop, a box of fake skulls, and four empty brackets on the wall where the drives used to be.

The cables hung there, cut clean.

The machinist touched one of the ends and grunted.

"Snips," he said. "Not pulled. Somebody knew what he was doing."

"Winston doesn't know what he's doing," Dakota said.

"Somebody did it for him," I said.

Dakota called the boss.

At 12:50 a.m., our boss came in through the loading door in a raincoat over pajamas, her gray braid down her back, holding a travel mug.

"This had better be a fire," she said.

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