Chapter 3

3: 3

What—Chad was dead too?

The room went black for a second, and I nearly lost my footing.

What the hell was going on?

My hand shook as I raised it, staring at the time clock in front of me, terror crawling all the way up my spine.

Once could be coincidence. But twice?

Why was it that the moment I clocked in, someone dropped dead the very next second, at the exact time on my punch?

Just yesterday, Veronica had said a few coworkers at the company had died out of nowhere before this.

There was no way that was because of my clocking in too, right?

My head was a snarled mess, and I couldn't make sense of any of it.

Then a crowd suddenly poured through the company doors. I looked closer—every one of them was a former coworker of mine.

"Everard, get out here!"

"Was it you who killed Supervisor Lambert and Chad?"

They came at me without a word. I couldn't dodge in time, and someone slammed a brick into my forehead.

Blood came pouring out at once, and the pain nearly knocked me out cold right there.

My coworkers saw it and rushed to hold them back, shouting furiously:

"What do you think you're doing? Someone died at your company—call the cops, get the police! What are you doing storming in here to raise hell?"

But the enraged crowd didn't care about any of that.

Every one of them was worked up, glaring at me through gritted teeth:

"Who else could it be, if not him?"

"In that whole company, he's the only one who had bad blood with Supervisor Lambert and Chad! Even Blake, Alex, Keith and a couple others clashed with him, and every single one of them is dead now!"

Someone shot back:

"So on what grounds do you decide he killed them? Just because they had bad blood?"

"You need evidence to accuse someone of murder, don't you? No footage, no fingerprints, no witnesses—not a thing. On what grounds are you calling him a killer?"

My coworkers backed me up one after another, demanding they produce proof.

The Zenith Tech crowd suddenly lost their nerve.

"But Chad told us Supervisor Lambert was killed by Everard, and he said he had proof!"

I fired back at once, furious:

"If he had proof, then why didn't he hand it to the police?"

"Chad loved running his mouth and talking big. He says something and you all just believe it? Well, I say I didn't kill anyone—why don't you believe that?"

They looked at me, hesitating:

"But he also said... you'd kill every one of us."

I almost laughed from sheer anger.

I pulled up the company security footage right there, jabbed a finger at myself on the screen, and snapped:

"Take a good look. When Jordan Lambert and Chad died, I wasn't anywhere near the scene."

"I don't have a damn body double. How the hell could I have killed them?"

I watched myself on the footage, clocking in at the front desk, my palm tightening without meaning to.

Yes, the times Lambert and the others died lined up exactly with the times I clocked in.

But that didn't prove I killed them.

Even if they noticed that, it couldn't convict me!

By the afternoon, though, they had me cornered at the company doors again.

"Everard, you're still saying it wasn't you?"

I stood there, lost.

Then they shoved Veronica out to the front. She looked at me, her face full of guilt:

"Everard, I'm sorry, the video... they found the video!"

Something detonated inside my skull.

Hadn't she deleted that video right in front of me last night?

"It wasn't me, I didn't kill anyone!"

I waved my hands, panicking, but they threw down a set of attendance records:

"Still lying? If you didn't kill anyone, then explain these clock-in times!"

"Chad already had it all pieced together. From the day you joined this company, they started dying one by one, in the strangest ways. You planned every one of these murders!"

I looked down, and the clock-in times on those attendance records

lined up perfectly with the times Jordan Lambert, Keith, and the others had died!

I stood there, stunned to my core.

"No, I didn't! I'm being framed!"

I was about to explain when a group of police officers walked in:

"Everard Gilbert, we suspect you of involvement in the deaths of Jordan Lambert, Chad, and the others. Please come with us to the police department for questioning."