UGH!

The spicy girl covered her face in pain and looked at Dean and his companions irritably. "Which security footage do you want to see?"

Dean didn't speak but gave Harry a meaningful look.

"Spicy girl," Harry, who understood instantly from many past collaborations, whistled at the woman. "Could you please pull up all the security footage from the evening of May 26th to the morning of May 27th covering the 'Mrs. Jin's Department Store' office? We need the elevator footage too."

The spicy girl was clearly annoyed by Harry's flippant gesture. After glaring at him, she sat down, and her fingers flew across the control panel. The blank screens in front of them soon displayed the security footage for the requested dates.

"Watch it yourselves!"

With that, the spicy girl sidled up to Indy and began whispering appeasements, seemingly begging for forgiveness.

Indy, who had been stone-faced, was cajoled by her words until the corners of his mouth twitched upwards. He then simply pulled her out of the monitoring room, leaving it to Dean and his team.

Dean gave the spicy girl's retreating figure a searching look before turning his attention to the surveillance screens.

Mrs. Jin's Department Store Foreign Trade Company was a small business. Its office was more functional than anything, situated on a floor near the fire escape. Consequently, surveillance was limited to the hallway corridor, the fire escape, and one camera covering the office's main entrance.

Therefore, including the elevator footage, Dean and his team only needed to check three screens.

"Fast-forward. Max speed!" Dean said softly.

Harry moved to comply, but a figure darted past him, taking the seat the spicy girl had just vacated. He increased the playback speed to eight times normal.

It was Cheston En.

After making the adjustment, he turned with a friendly, almost fawning, smile for Dean.

Dean nodded, his attention already on the surveillance footage.

Harry and Carlo exchanged a look, sensing a threat from Cheston En.

...

Reviewing the footage this time wasn't actually tiring.

The self-proclaimed Demon, the miniature model killer, had emailed the victim, Johnny Dennison, at a little past three in the morning.

At that hour, besides the patrolling security guards, not even the cleaners were around.

On the surveillance video, everything appeared normal.

Time advanced quickly.

Soon, the timestamp reached 2:50 AM. Just then—

The feed from the fire escape camera suddenly went black.

Cheston En frowned. "Did the target take out the camera?"

"No!" Dean countered Cheston En's assumption. "Rewind the footage. Stop it one second before it went black!"

Cheston En did as instructed.

In the frozen frame, a very faint white line appeared in mid-air.

"What is that?"

Harry, Carlo, and Cheston En were astonished.

Just moments before, they had completely missed the fleeting object.

Dean stroked his chin. "I don't know. But it's clear the target came through the fire escape and physically blocked the camera."

The fire escape camera's feed was now useless.

The four of them had no choice but to shift their attention to the hallway camera.

This camera covered the main entrance to the Mrs. Jin's Department Store Foreign Trade Company office and was some distance from the fire escape. Obscuring it physically without making a sound would be difficult, unless one were to shoot it out.

Then, a few seconds after the fire escape camera went dark, a thin crack appeared in the fire escape door. The same faint white line shot out from the gap, striking the hallway camera dead center!

That feed went black too!

However, thanks to the different angle and distance this time, the group finally got a slightly better look at what flew out.

It appeared to be a soft, pliable white mass!

"That trajectory... doesn't it look like it was launched from a slingshot?" Carlo traced an arc on the screen with his finger. "During my service, my squadmates and I often used military-grade slingshots to hunt birds and Asian carp."

Harry, however, focused on the building's security.

"These monitoring rooms usually have someone on duty 24/7. Even if the person stationed here was negligent, the next shift of security would have noticed the obscured cameras and investigated. But when we asked to see these two camera feeds, that spicy girl didn't act strangely at all."

Cheston En nodded in agreement. "Harry's right. Even if building security wanted to avoid alarming the tenants, they would have discreetly investigated this anomaly. They'd know these two cameras had recent problems."

Although Harry, who prided himself on being Dean's number-one guy, was annoyed that Cheston En had just been sucking up to Dean and stolen his task, he still felt pleased to hear Cheston En support his assessment, and his expression toward him softened considerably.

Dean, however, gestured for Cheston En to continue playing the footage.

Though Cheston En didn't understand what was worth seeing on a black screen, he obediently complied.

They continued to fast-forward.

Time on the recording flew by.

About half an hour later,

The hallway's previously pitch-black screen suddenly showed a sliver of light.

It was as if the lens had been covered by something, and that something was now slowly being peeled off.

The next moment, a misshapen white blob on the hallway floor was pulled by something 'invisible' back through the crack in the fire escape door. Soon after, something similar happened with the fire escape camera!

It dawned on everyone.

After finishing his work, the target had even retrieved whatever was used to block the cameras!

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