Shortly after Rico left, Riley breezed through the backstage entrance. She hesitated when she spotted Jett standing near a clutter of props, eyes sweeping over Jett in a scrutinizing gaze.

After a moment, Jett finally scoffed. “What?”

“You look like the cat who ate the canary,” Riley said slowly.

Jett frowned. “Do people still use that phrase anymore?”

“Don’t change the subject. What’d you do?” Riley asked pointedly.

For a moment, he thought about telling her what had happened between him and the detective. Riley had been both his assistant and friend for years, and there wasn’t much hidden between the two of them. The words formed behind his lips but he chose to keep them in place, holding onto the secret.

Jett shrugged. “Last I checked, I’m always up to something, at least according to other people.”

“You’re avoiding answering me. That’s fine, I’ll figure it out eventually,” Riley told him with a devilish grin of her own.

Jett patted his pants pocket. “I do have a new little project for us to enjoy, if you’re interested.”

Riley’s gaze followed his motion, raising a brow. “And somehow hearing you have a new project makes me a little nervous. Excited, but nervous all the same.”

Jett pulled out the flash drive he’d gotten from Dutch and held it up. “I may or may not have the footage from the night Oliver was killed. Thought you might be willing to look it over with me.”

The hesitant look on her face remained for a moment as she eyed the drive, then lit into a smile. “And do I want to know how you got your hands on it?”

“I assure you, it was totally legal. The good detective decided I was allowed to go with him when he went for some interviews, and I got it off of Dutch,” Jett explained, wiggling the drive in the air.

Riley laughed, pacing over to the spot behind stage where she stacked her things. “I guess it’s a good thing you rely on me to tote everything around for you, huh? Let me grab the laptop and we can take a look.”

Pleased she was both willing to watch the video and to lay her initial suspicions to rest, Jett waited with a small smile. Despite being a suspect in a murder case, Jett would describe his mood as buoyant and carefree. He was a man who greatly enjoyed having a bit of fun every now and then, and sex with Rico had been all that and more. Jett hadn’t admitted it to Rico, but the sex was the best Jett had had in quite some time. The other thing he hadn’t admitted was the strange sense of intimacy and affection between them, even at the end.

The only thing marring the memory was knowing Rico was still suspicious of Jett. It certainly hadn’t stopped either of them from taking their clothes off on the stage floor, but it definitely tainted the remembrance for Jett a little. He knew he shouldn’t take it personally, and in all reality, he was a little bothered that Rico’s opinion of him mattered in the slightest.

Riley propped the laptop up on a table, eyeing Jett. “Thinking deep thinks over there?”

“Well, when your name is on the list of people who might have killed someone, you get lost thinking about it every now and then,” Jett replied, handing over the drive.

Riley took it, plugging the USB into the laptop and opening up the files. “Well, we both know you didn’t do it, so don’t worry about it too much. Mr. Grumpy Cop should probably be good enough at his job to figure it out on his own.”

“And yet we’re going to go nosing through some evidence all the same,” Jett said with a smirk as the video player opened on the screen.

“Looks like they got a good chunk of time saved onto this thing,” Riley said as she eyed the time stamp at the bottom.

Jett nodded. “Dutch said he took a whole piece of the day Oliver was killed to make sure they had everything. Rico said he hadn’t heard back from his tech guys just yet, so let’s save him some time, shall we?”

Riley looked over her shoulder at him. “Rico?”

“The cop, the grump,” Jett explained, realizing he’d let something slip.

Riley snorted. “I guess you two have gotten a little closer than before, huh?”

Jett pointed at the screen. “What’s that?”

Riley shook her head. “It’s when Oliver left the hotel room, don’t change the subject. Again.”

Jett nudged her aside, fiddling with the controls. “I’m not changing the subject, I’m staying focused on the original topic. How do I get to where he first entered the room?”

“Move over and I’ll do it,” Riley said, fingers moving confidently over the keys.

Jett waited until he spotted movement. “There, back up.”

Riley did so, tapping the timestamp at the bottom. “Well, there he is. Looks like he was in his room for only a couple of hours.”

“Wheel the tape back a bit and see if anyone else enters the room before him. Who knows, maybe we’ll get some sort of clue,” Jett said, doubting it.

“You really think we’ll find something the cops might not?” Riley asked as she set the video to rewind.

Jett shrugged. “It’s possible, or maybe we’ll just see something before they do. Stranger things have happened.”

“It still won’t explain how he was in his room even though he left it before he was found dead,” Riley reminded him.

“Yes, thank you for that reminder. Wait, stop, go back,” Jett said, jabbing his finger at the screen.

Riley waved his hand off as she rewound the video. “Hold your horses, you don’t need to stab my laptop because you’re excitable. I told you to switch to decaf. Wait. Is that…?”

Jett bent down to squint at the screen, knowing the face of the man entering the room, “Yeah, Oliver.”

“Did we miss something?” Riley asked.

Jett shook his head. “Go forward from there to where we first saw him entering the room later in the feed.”

Riley tapped a few keys, fast-forwarding the video. “We had to have missed something.”

Yet, as they watched, the film gradually worked its way up to where Oliver had first entered the room, or so they had thought. Jett had Riley rewind it again, moving it forward, wanting to be sure. Yet no matter how many times he made her go through the cycles, it was always the same result. Oliver entered the room twice, without having left it save for the last time.

“How can he be leaving the room twice? Do you think there’s a trap door in the room?” Riley asked.

He’d already checked the room, but another thought blossomed in his head and he clenched his teeth. “No, I don’t think that’s the answer.”