The door opened easily. “There must have been employees working overtime in their offices.” Emily silently went up to the second floor, careful that her heels did not make a sound on the marble staircase.
Ethan’s office greeted her with the scent of leather and expensive cologne. On the desk were neat piles of documents. In a corner, a safe, and along the wall, shelves full of binders. None of them read.
Emily turned on the desk lamp and began her investigation. First, she looked in the desk drawers—standard paperwork, pens, stamps. In the bottom drawer, she found a USB drive labeled personal. She took it. She might need it.
Then she went to the filing cabinet. The files were arranged alphabetically and by subject—wills, deeds of sale, inheritance cases. Many binders, but none read, “Where could it be?”
Emily searched everywhere: behind the expensive modern art painting, in the safe, under the rug.
And then her gaze fell on a small cabinet in a corner of the office. She approached and saw it was locked with a common padlock. Strange. Why lock a cabinet in your own office?