The red contents of wine sits in a glass opposite me on the table where my books and files lay beside it. I scrunch myself into a comfortable position in the corner of the sofa and stare at the wine, seeing myself being dragged down in the red depths, unable to claw my way back up. Raine is floating above on her private yacht, teasing me with a thick rope that she tugs back up every time I'm within reach of it. She laughs and cackles at my struggles while I kick around and try to find any source of air. Poppy and Martin laugh with Raine, but she's not thinking of them. She'd push them off that boat and make them join me if they weren't of use to her.

My phone rings. I gasp and sit up, finally breathing again because apparently I had been holding my breath.

Too much wine.

I shake my head and sigh before grabbing my phone off the table and answering Connor.

"Hello?" I say.

"Hi, Vanessa. Sorry to be calling so late."

"Don't worry, I was looking through some files anyway."

"They're going to keep questioning Poppy and Martin for as long as they can, but it's not looking hopeful. Martin's going away for a long time as he was the one who shot the gun. Poppy's getting a lot of time, but not as much as Martin. Therapy is in store for her, it seems her lawyer is trying to get a deal for less time due to her mental state."

"Right. Thanks for letting me know. Any news on Raine or the driver?"

"Na-da. I called Octavia before you. She's going to stop by your flat tomorrow to go through CCTV footage with you."

I glance around my messy flat, causing me to hesitate before answering. "Sounds good."

"See you soon. And good work today. I know it doesn't seem like much right now, but we're getting closer."

"Thanks, Connor."

The phone beeps when it ends, allowing me to place it down on the table before I get up and start to clean my flat, ready for tomorrow when Octavia will visit. She is two years younger than me, yet she always acts like she's the one who's older. We've known each other for four years, yet I still hardly know anything about her private life. We get along, we're friendly with one another at work, yet we sometimes have our disagreements. However, we've never spent the day alone together. Not outside the office.

I must have been so exhausted that I collapsed on the sofa during my attempted cleaning, because I'm suddenly woken to the sound of my flat door buzzing. Looking at the time and gasping at the realisation, I jump up and quickly tie my hair into its natural position of a low bun before rushing to the door and allowing Octavia to enter.

She, as always, looks presentable and smart with no faults to her appearance. Her blonde hair is so silky it looks as if she's floating in water. There's never any knots or a hair out of place. She has full control over it, almost as if she doesn't allow it to falter. While looking around my apartment to examine it but not once judging, she removes her jacket and reveals the many tattoos that crawl up her hands and arms.

"Hi," I welcome Octavia and quickly take the coat from her hands before hanging it up. She moves past me to sit on the sofa. I look down at myself and realise I'm still in my pyjamas.

"I'll just be a minute," I tell her before racing to my bedroom and stripping off my clothes. I replace them with a tight black T-shirt and a pair of cargo trousers. My hair still needs a wash and I have mascara smudged slightly under my eye, but it's better than nothing.

When I meet her in the living room, she's inspecting the wine bottle that I left on the table. She looks up to me and raises her eyebrows. "Late night?"

I laugh awkwardly and quickly whisk the bottle away before taking a seat beside her on the sofa, clearing my throat and stroking down the stray pieces of hair.

"Connor said we'd be going through the security footage?" I say in a professional tone. This is no time to be making friends with my coworkers. Especially the one who seems to have hated me for all these years.

Octavia nods and pulls out a USB stick that she places in the palm of my hand and waits for me to grab a laptop. I create a setup and manage to project the footage onto the TV so we have a bigger screen to examine it carefully.

"I don't know why," she tells me. "Connor knows there's going to be nothing on there. This is a waste of time."

"You never know, there could be something. Even if it is a waste of time, it's better to check."

She turns her head and smirks at me while I jot down notes in my book. I try to concentrate solely on the footage ahead, but she really knows how to get under my skin and distract me.

I put down my pen and sigh. "What?"

"You're such a golden girl," she says before turning away again.

I freeze. Golden girl. She used to always call me that. Matilda or Raine — whatever her name is. Whenever her and dad would get into an argument, she would ruffle my hair and smile before saying: "Why do you look so worried, golden girl? You know he'd never treat you like this." But she didn't realise that the real reason I looked worried was because I was scared for her. Not for myself. I knew it was unfair, and she knew it too.

"Knew there would be nothing," Octavia huffs before turning off the TV after four hours of going back and forth through the footage, stopping when we think we see something, zooming in to get a closer look, only to find that it's insignificant or something we've already discovered.

"Well it's the South Road that we lost her on. How about we go to the shops on that street and ask for any CCTV footage they might have?" I suggest.

Octavia stares at me while she thinks over this, then suddenly nods her head and takes a stand, eager to get on with the job. "Let's go then."

I grab our coats and we leave in my car.

* * *

As the cold breeze brushes against us, I stare down at Octavia's black denim skirt and wonder how she's not shivering with the lack of warmth her clothes are giving. However, she doesn't seem bothered in the slightest and continues to walk down the street with a hard expression on her features.

I've tried to figure Octavia out for years, but she's hard to read. Hot and cold. Enthusiastic but always rolling her eyes. Eager to work but sighing at the thought of it. Smiling one morning, frowning the next. One minute I think I understand her, but the next she's like a completely different person. It seems she likes to keep people out and push them away at any chance she gets.

"So," I say, deciding to make conversation about her so we can pass the time and I can find out more about her life that remains a mystery to me. "What do your parents think of all this?"

Octavia's body tenses at my question while she scowls in my direction. "Why are you asking about my parents?"

"I'm just making conversation."

"Well don't," she snaps.

I widen my eyes and hold my hands into a surrender pose. "Sorry. We've been working together for years, but I know nothing about you. I thought it would be the right time to ask as this is the first time we've been alone together outside work."

"This is still work," she reminds me.

"Yeah, but-"

"Just stop trying to be my friend. We're coworkers, we're working. We'll never talk again once this case is over and your sister is caught." Octavia stops walking, so I stop with her.

I scoff and try not to laugh. "Who said I was trying to be your friend?"

"Come on, Vanessa. It's pretty obvious."

I shrug and stick out my bottom lip. "There's nothing wrong with being friendly."

She rolls her eyes and continues to walk down the pavement ahead. "This is the shop I was talking to you about. Hopefully their CCTV will show Raine and the way she went."

I stare up at the small restaurant with a green and yellow sign covered with white cursive letters. Octavia leads the way and together we show our badges to the shop assistant who calls out her manager. The man in a purple stripped shirt shakes our hands and walks us to the back of the building to a room that looks to be his office. He searches through his computer while asking questions we cannot answer about our investigation and what we're trying to find. This added stress doesn't seem to have helped his already busy day, but he still hands us a USB stick and offers to help in any way he can before we leave.

We don't go back to mine incase we find something on the footage that we'll need to follow, so we sit in my car and watch the CCTV on Octavia's laptop. We watch through the entire day of the robbery, just in case Raine and her 'friends' had walked by in the early hours before, only to find nothing. We finally get to the time just after the incident took place, and suddenly we watch the getaway car skid into a tiny, dark alleyway. They don't come back out again.

"I don't understand. That alleyway is a dead end," Octavia whispers to herself.

"Are you sure?"

"You want me to show you?" she asks, sounding offended that I questioned her, but also willing to show me.

So she does. She takes me down the alleyway that grows darker and gloomier with each step we take. There's a large metal gate at the end; impossible to climb from the ground. No way through due to the lock that is fitted tightly and stiff with rust.

"Told you," she sighs.

Confused, I touch the padlock and glance at the extra lock above. I give the top lock a pull, only to find that it's stiff and stuck in place. But then I see the large bins, the air vents that stick out, the staircases.

"They climbed," I say as I realise it.

"They can't have. Look how tall that is."

"Look around you. They have so many obstacles to get over it. It may have been difficult, but it's doable."

Octavia scrunches her face as she glances around and also comes to the same realisation. Without warning, she takes off her coat and begins to climb on top of the bin that she walks across with ease.

"What are you doing?" I ask in disbelief.

"What does it look like? I'm seeing if you're right. If they can do it, so can I."

She uses an air vent for support while grabbing a metal staircase from the building and pulls herself up. After steadying herself, she climbs over the other side of the staircase and looks down at the other side of the fence with the massive drop.

"It's going to be a ten minute walk back. You know that, right?" I ask her with my arms folded.

She looks down at me, smiles smugly, and then jumps. I close my eyes tightly and hear the sound of her boots colliding with the ground beneath her. Once I slowly open them again, I see Octavia brushing off her hands and knees.

"Are you okay?" I quickly ask, relieved that she didn't fall wrong or hurt herself.

"Yeah fine. Clearly they jumped over then."

"Now we just have to figure out where they went next. Let's take this to Connor."