Chapter 14 - The Cloud Backup
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Bell walked fully into the room, checking the hallway behind him before shutting the door.
“Ortiz saw three young men fleeing the parking structure at exactly 11:15 p.m.,” Bell reported, reading from a fresh notepad.
“Which three?” I demanded.
“Chad Kensington, Brantley Sterling, and Wyatt Holbrook.”
“And Preston Caldwell?” I asked.
Bell looked toward Nora, who was watching him with wide, frightened eyes.
“Ortiz saw Preston too,” Bell said softly. “But Preston wasn't fleeing the scene with the other three.”
“What was he doing?”
“According to Ortiz, Preston was running frantically back into the dark garage. He was shouting at the top of his lungs that someone needed an ambulance.”
Nobody spoke. The image of the terrified college boy sprinting back into the dark to save my daughter clashed violently with the narrative of a coordinated assault.
Bell pulled a folded piece of paper from his inner jacket pocket. “Also... we got the cloud backup subpoena approved by a sympathetic judge an hour ago. We pulled the missing footage.”
My heart began pounding against my ribs like a war drum. “You saw the video?”
“Part of it. The file is corrupted, but we salvaged a few frames.”
“What does it show?”
“The main camera inside the north stairwell was physically blocked with black tape before the incident. But another security camera across the courtyard captured a reflection in the glass facade of the engineering building.”
He unfolded the paper and laid a high-resolution, color-enhanced still image on Nora’s tray table.
The picture was grainy and distorted by the glass reflection, but the subjects were unmistakable.
Four young men stood in a tense circle near the garage entrance. Nora was visible several yards away, stepping out of the shadows. One of the boys—Preston—was clearly holding a thick manila folder out toward her.
And behind them, lurking in the shadows cast by a concrete pillar, stood a fifth figure.
It wasn't a student. It was a massive, older man wearing a black tactical jacket with the Wellington University security logo on the shoulder.
Maya leaned forward, squinting at the photo. “Who is that guy?”
Detective Bell's face tightened with anger. “We ran facial recognition. We identified him.”
He slapped a second, clear photograph beside the grainy one.
I recognized the cold, dead eyes immediately. Martin Vale. The university's director of risk management.
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“He was there?” I asked, my voice deadly calm.
Bell nodded slowly. “And according to official university time-clock records, Martin Vale officially left campus for the night at 8:14 p.m.”
