Chapter 4

I tapped open the company group chat I'd left on mute all afternoon.

It had completely blown up.

The screen was wall-to-wall photos of black smoke pouring out, ugly and impossible to look away from.

In one shot, Luther was down on the waterlogged ground outside the warehouse, both hands clamped over his face.

That cheap, damp-ruined lighter lay tossed to one side, and behind him the warehouse roller door had buckled out of shape, smoke gushing wildly through the gaps.

New messages were coming in a dozen a second.

"Oh my God! The warehouse is on fire! Luther's been burned!"

"Somebody call 911! Where's the fire truck?"

"How did it just catch like that? What was all that flammable stuff on the ground by the door?"

Then Mason dropped a sixty-second voice message into the chat.

I played it, and his roar filled the whole living room in an instant.

"Oliver! You vicious piece of work!"

"Fine, you didn't want to lend a lighter. So why the hell did you pour gasoline outside the warehouse?"

"Security says they never stored any flammable liquid anywhere near there! That oil on the ground is all you!"

"You were jealous Luther was getting hired on full-time, so you deliberately used a lighter to torch the place and scar him for life!"

"I'm telling you, this is arson, plain and simple! You just wait to go to prison!"

I looked at the messages on the screen, cold-eyed.

Absurd. Completely absurd.

I'd left the office at two thirty that afternoon. The security cameras and the keycard logs both recorded it.

And he was still trying to pin the gasoline on me.

Before I could even close the app, a glaring topic popped up in the local trending list.

"Vicious veteran employee, jealous, splashes fuel outside warehouse and sets fire that scars intern for life"

A dark red "HOT" tag sat right behind it.

I clicked in. The first post was a ghost-pale selfie of Luther lying on a stretcher in an ambulance.

His face was wrapped in gauze, tear tracks at the corners of his eyes, the caption laid on thick:

"My face, my future, all gone."

"If this senior had a problem with me, he could have taken it out on me directly. Why destroy my whole life like this?"

The post was shared over ten thousand times in ten minutes.

The comments were a flood of raging curses at me. Someone had even dug up my employee badge photo and my name.

"A murderer like this should be cut to pieces!"

"Find out what company he's at and blacklist him across the whole industry!"

My phone buzzed hard. It was the recruiter from the new company.

The moment I answered, the voice on the other end came fast and clipped:

"Mr. Henson, given that you're currently caught up in an extremely damaging public scandal—"

"Director Finch's instruction is to suspend your offer for now, until the police issue a clear conclusion to their investigation."

"I'm sorry. We can't take on that kind of reputational risk."

The call cut off from their end.

At the same moment, a huge crash—

Someone kicked my security door hard from the outside, hard enough to shake dust from the walls.

Curses came through from the hallway.

"Oliver! You murdering animal! Get your ass out here!"

"You ruined my husband's face, and I want a life for a life!"

"Break the door down! We're beating him to death today!"

The door handle was wrenched back and forth, metal shrieking as it twisted.

I sat on the couch, watching the iron door shudder.

And dialed 911.

After hanging up, I moved quickly to the computer.

I opened the company's internal collaboration software and started an online video meeting with mandatory attendance for everyone.

I dragged in Mason, the company's HR director, the legal counsel, and Luther's account, pulling them all into the room.

The instant the call connected, Mason's face, twisted with rage, filled the screen.

"Oliver! You've got the nerve to open a video call? You get to the hospital and kneel and apologize right now!"

I ignored his roaring and turned the camera on myself.

Then I slowly raised my right hand.

In front of the lens, I held up a small black USB drive.

"When Luther lit that fire, the camera outside the warehouse really was broken."

"So you all figured no one saw it, and you could just make up whatever story you liked."

I looked at Mason on the screen, a cold smile curving at the corner of my mouth.

"Want to see what's on the drive?"