Chapter 10: Thursday at 4:19

Mikkel's POV

I walked Natalie to her door, and I waited on the stairs until the light came on in her window.

Then I walked back to the lab with my hands in my pockets.

I told myself I was going to read the export properly, with the column headers, as I had said.

That was true, and it was not the whole truth.

I had seen the filename in the preview line before I closed the laptop.

It was a spreadsheet of every tap on the headcount app since September.

I sat down at the desk and opened it.

The first rows were practice days, a hundred names and a hundred small green ticks.

I scrolled to the sheet for Saturday, November 15.

Forty-two names had been tapped aboard between 4:48 and 5:02, one after another, as the players climbed onto the buses.

Tate had tapped all forty-two.

The last tap before the signature was at 5:01.

The forty-third name was not in that run.

I used the search bar and typed her surname.

Cahill, Natalie. Status: aboard. Tapped by: T. Rowley.

The time was not Saturday.

It was Thursday, November 13, at 4:19 p.m.

I read it three times.

Then I opened the other tab, where the department had also included the email log for the same afternoon.

Natalie's warning had been sent at 4:12 and opened by Tate at 4:15.

Four minutes after he read that the buses should wait for every person, he had tapped her name green.

Not by mistake, and not in the rush of the lot.

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