The first envelope contained pages one through four. The second began at seven.
Tessa stopped turning the sheets. Nora held the inventory pen above the paper.
“Were five and six removed?” Eli asked.
“We don’t know,” Nora said. “Write that they aren’t present.”
The table was covered with a clean sheet. Tessa wore gloves because the packet had been carried through a damaged shelter and a clinic treatment area; Nora had confirmed the inquiry would accept the handling record. Marisol’s signed note lay beside the outer envelope. Kellan held a lamp over the work, and Sera kept her shelter measurements in a separate folder.
Tessa recorded the page numbers in the order they appeared. Pages one through four described a gate survey and a transfer between offices. Page seven began a contractor summary. Pages five and six were absent. The packet might never have contained them; it might have lost them before Quill received it; someone might have removed them. The evidence on the table did not distinguish those possibilities.
A contractor appeared under two abbreviations: C-S on the transfer sheet and CSF on the summary. Quill had tried to explain the first before pain interrupted her. Tessa wrote the exact abbreviations and the pages on which they appeared.
