Chapter 5

"Officer Newman, you've got to be kidding me, right?" I asked.

Ethan didn't say a word, just kept his piercing gaze fixed on me. His stare sent a freezing shiver straight down my spine.

"Charlie, I know this is incredibly hard to process right now, but the cameras don't lie."

He turned his computer monitor toward me. The footage was paused on a clip of me—and only me—walking into my building.

I stared blankly at the screen.

It was true. The streets had been empty that night, and I was the only person captured on camera. And right there in my hands, I was carrying that exact gift box.

My memory began to fracture, and I desperately tried to piece it back together, but nothing made sense.

"C-Could the footage have been tampered with?" I asked, my voice trembling as I clutched at the final straw.

"If this person could successfully impersonate my wife, she could easily hack into a security system. Hacker tech is insanely advanced these days…"

Ethan let out a slow sigh, a flicker of pity crossing his face. "Charlie, you can alter timestamps, but the person in that frame is undeniably you, and that box is undeniably in your hands.

"Are you suggesting a killer specifically chose an object you handled, managed to bypass every single camera to slip into your apartment, and left absolutely zero physical evidence behind?"

He leaned forward. "What kind of master criminal has that level of counter-surveillance capability? And all of that just to frame an ordinary, stay-at-home guy?"

Ethan's words hit me like a bucket of ice water.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

Yet, I knew my memory wasn't playing tricks on me. Someone had been in my home that night.

Suddenly, a spark ignited in my brain. "I took pictures that night!"

I bolted upright, knocking my chair backward with a loud clang. "We took photos during dinner! Alayna is right there in the frame! The photo will have the timestamp!"

With frantic hands, I scrambled to open my phone's gallery and shoved the screen toward him. "Look! This has to prove it!"

Ethan took the phone, exchanging a quick look with his partner.

The screen clearly displayed the metadata for the photo. "April 1, 2026, 9:47 pm."

When zoomed in, Alayna's face was perfectly clear. She was smiling at the camera, raising a wine glass, with the gift box sitting right next to her hand.

The interrogation room plunged into a heavy silence.

As Ethan stared at the image, his brow furrowed into a tight knot.

He looked back at the surveillance footage, then back to the photo.

On one side stood the absolute objectivity of the security cameras, proving no one had entered.

On the other side stood a hard digital file, proving the dinner had actually happened.

The two pieces of evidence sat side by side like two parallel universes, grinding the investigation to a complete halt.

No one spoke. The only movement in the room was the red digits of the digital wall clock, silently ticking away the seconds.

I slumped into my chair, completely drained of energy. My mind was a tangled web of chaos.

When I closed my eyes, all I could see was Alayna's face, warping back and forth between her usual gentle smile and the cold look in her eyes under the candlelight that night.

The images blurred together until I couldn't tell what was real anymore.

Suddenly, a sharp knock shattered the silence, and a female officer burst into the room.

The folder in her hand seemed to weigh a ton. Her face was deathly pale—visibly worse off than mine.

"Captain Newman, the expedited lab results just came back."

Ethan snatched the report from her hands and skimmed through the lines of text.

In a fraction of a second, his pupils dilated with absolute shock. "The DNA from the severed hand… matches Alayna?"