The Monitor In Bay Two

The monitor in bay two was already playing when I got there, Priya Anand standing beside the workbench with her arms folded, watching the same forty minutes I'd watched alone the night before.

"You should see the rest of it," I said.

Ryan came out of the office at the sound of my voice, phone in hand, and stopped cold when he saw the screen.

"That's you," I said. "That's the old part going back in."

"This doesn't prove anything." He said it fast, the way he always did when he'd already decided what he wanted to be true. "Could be an old clip. Could be a different job."

"Timestamped," Priya said, not looking away from the screen. "September second, one twenty-four PM. Matches your invoice exactly."

Ryan crossed the bay in three steps and reached for the remote sitting on the workbench, wanting the monitor dark and the last minute unseen. I got to it first and held it out of his reach.

"Dana, come on. You'll wreck the shop over this."

"You already wrecked it. I just found the proof."

Mike appeared in the bay doorway then, drawn by the raised voices, and went still when he saw his brother's face.

"I was behind on the loan," Ryan said, quieter now, the fight going out of him all at once. "Figured I'd put the old line back, bill the new one, sell it later once things settled. Never thought anyone would check."

"A man and his daughter almost died," I said.

"I know that." It was the first crack I'd heard in his voice all week. "I know exactly what I did."

Priya Anand was already lifting her phone to her ear, eyes on Ryan, voice flat and certain. "Stay right there. I'm calling this in to the state fraud unit."

Ryan's hand stayed raised toward the monitor, like he could still reach in and undo the forty minutes it had just shown all three of us, but the footage kept playing anyway, over and over, until Priya told the technician on the monitor to freeze it.