Saving Emma - A Flip Zimmerman fanfic

Chapter 4. Last Movements

Author's note: Hi! Thanks again for reading! This chapter mentions stalking and physical abuse so if that is triggering for you just know you have been warned. ❤️

Flip POV

Wednesday, Nov. 6th

When you got to the station you immediately logged into the computer to see if the security footage from Snow Basin had come through. It hadn't, so you continued putting together a suspect profile, constantly refreshing the system to check for updates.

At 8:30 Chris pulled you out of your focus. "How did I know you would already be here?"

You looked up at him briefly and grunted in acknowledgment.

"Did you eat anything?" He said.

Still looking at the computer screen you lifted your coffee cup, explaining without words that the coffee was your breakfast.

"Yeah, I figured," he said as he dropped a bag of food in front of you.

"Thanks," you replied, pushing the food to the side. While you continued to look through files you could feel Chris' eyes staring at you. "What?"

"Nothing. I'm just trying to figure out what is different about this case. I haven't seen you this invested for a long time."

You leaned back into your chair. His question didn't surprise you. Actually you had been expecting it. And even though you had asked yourself the same question all day yesterday and this morning you still didn't have an answer. You knew it wasn't the case that was motivating you. It was Emma. But you had no idea why. You didn't even know her. She just felt......familiar?

Important.

"I honestly don't know man. I just saw her picture and-," you were cut off by a ding from the computer.

The security footage.

"This is it!" You nearly shouted.

He moved his chair over beside you as you pulled up the file. You had requested the footage from 2 hours before the resort opened until 2 hours after it closed. Demi had told you Emma usually goes skiing around noon so you skimmed forward to 11:30 AM.

After a few minutes you saw Emma's car pull into the parking lot. She got out, wearing a light blue puffy coat and opened her trunk. Your heart fluttered while watching her, you even let out the softest chuckle when she lightly bumped her head on the hood of the trunk and looked around to make sure nobody witnessed it. After putting on most of her gear she grabbed her skis and walked out of the frame towards the lodge. You quickly changed to the lodge's lobby camera and caught her walking towards the main desk. She talked with the employee for a minute, smiling and radiating positive energy. You were entranced just by watching her laugh through a grainy image.

"Hey, go back about 45 seconds." Chris said, snapping you out of your rapture.

You went back until Chris told you to stop. "Look," he said. You moved your attention to the corner of the screen where Chris was pointing. While Emma was at the front desk, a man in dark clothing appeared at the corner of the video. He stopped and looked in Emma's direction for about 15 seconds, before turning and walking away.

Eventually Emma made her way outside and to the lifts where she greeted a few other skiers politely before getting on a lift herself.

As you continued to follow Emma's movements, so did this man. He showed up in every frame she was in. Trailing just 30 seconds behind her.

The timestamp on the video read 2:53 PM when Emma entered the Lodge again after quite a few runs down the mountain. She sat at a table near the center of the room, ordering something from the waitress and then pulling out her phone. Even though you could just see the back of her head you could tell she was laughing and joking around enthusiastically with Demi.