Her hand shook violently as she fumbled with the tab of the zipper.

"Please," she begged, her voice wobbling in a low whisper. The zipper was caught on its own teeth, and the suitcase was overstuffed.

She pushed down on the contents of the suitcase, hard, simultaneously wrenching the zipper. Finally, the teeth budged and closed with a swift zzz sound.

The relief was overwhelming. She wanted to collapse onto the case and thank a god she never believed in. But there was no time. He would know soon. He would catch his mistake, and he would come to find her.

Hauling the black case off the bed, she looked around her small bedroom in the tiny apartment. When she'd first moved in, she'd been so proud. Just got a job straight out of university working for the local forensic squad.

Something she'd always dreamt of doing ever since she was a little girl, sitting on the couch with her mom, snuggled up under a blanket with CSI playing on the television. She'd had aspirations of being a heroine like her idols on the shows. Just and good.

When she started, she never thought it would end this way.

A few weeks ago, detectives were working on a case involving a series of break-ins in the homes of young women. Personal items were taken, such as hair ties and underwear.

Initially they suspected they were unrelated and were closely at staff members that worked withing the building as several of the victims stated they had a member of maintenance or office staff in their home around the time of the break-in.

This theory hadn't gone over so well, as there were signs of forced entry, discovered by the forensic team on their visits. A member of staff wouldn't need to kick in the door or break a window to get in. She never said anything, though. Her job was to report her findings to the detectives so that they could do their job.

Once the break-ins escalated to a near assault on a woman, whose address was blocks away from the original victims, the cops were forced to the conclusion that they were related instances. This latest update, while traumatic for the victim, provided her team with the most evidence yet. The victim had grabbed a handful of her would-be assailant's hair and managed to rip a few out right from the root.

This gave her team the name of the assailant. When they ran it through the system, however, nothing came as a match. Still, if they could find a single suspect, there would be DNA to test against.

She'd been the one to run that DNA. She held the evidence bag with a chunk of dark brown, curly hair in her hands and examined it.

She had no intention of doing what she did. Something had taken over. An instinct that put her body on autopilot.

She'd gone to the precinct to deliver the results of the DNA test results to the detectives. They'd been notified over the phone, but they liked to have hard copies of the reports as well to keep on file. When she'd arrived, the squad was gathered around the governor, who seemed to be doing some sort of press shoot. He did this often, actually, in a city where crime wasn't common, and he wanted the people to know that every case was taken seriously. He'd show up and get the rundown on the case and then give a statement on camera right there in the middle of the squad room.

She was waiting, watching the governor as he shook hands with the lieutenant, when a stand of brown curly hair fell into his face.

A falling sensation in her stomach. She couldn't understand why. Most men had dark brown curly hair. Half of the police force right in front of her did. Alarm bells still rang as her heart raced, and she left the copy of the report on a random desk and slowly got nearer the governor. She had no plan.

She stood, stiff, in the crowd of policemen with her eyes locked on the governor. Her eyes attempted to scan the top of his head, searching desperately for a patch of missing hair.

"Can I get you anything else?" the lieutenant offered and she watched as the governor handed something to him. An empty plastic bottle.

"I'm all set. We'll get this out of here and be on our way. Thank you for your hospitality as always, Lieutenant," he said kindly, shaking the free hand of the Lieutenant.

Her eyes locked on the water bottle, the way a hawk watches a mouse from the sky. She tracked its movement to a large trash bin in the corner.

Slowly, as the governor's team worked to move the podium away, she inched toward the trash.

All eyes were still focused on the governor, so when she reached the garbage, she reached down slowly, and took the empty bottle. She had no coat, no purse, no way to hide the object, so she did what she thought was the most reasonable choice and she took off out of the building.

When she glanced over her shoulder, ice poured down her spine. Looking right at her, dark hair, and dark eyes, was the govenor. Smile gone. Expression hard and cold.

She ran. She ran to the lab holding onto that bottle like a life preserver in a wild ocean. She knew. Instinctively, he would check that trash can. That he would know what she did. Her only hope in delaying was that he would have no idea who she was or why she took it. That would buy her time.

When she arrived back at the lab, the results were as she'd feared. The DNA from the water bottle was a near-perfect match to the hairs from the crime scene.

She didn't initially plan on running away. She planned to have a private and serious talk with the detectives on the case. But yet another curveball threw her completely off course. She'd been searching their database for the full compilation of evidence her team had found at the crime scene so that she could add all the findings immediately, then she would send it to the detectives. Instead, she found something else.

Her supervisor had handled a large portion of the evidence taken in from the scene, as noted in the public chart immediately available to all team members. They had this system for shift changes, so that way others could know who did what in the event they were required to retrieve information about a case.

She skipped over the public chart and went directly into her supervisor's report folder. Reports that were given to the detectives were typically worked on by every party who was taking in evidence at the crime scene, but they would write the report as though it came from one entity, so that the information read smoothly for the officers.

In the software, the technician who entered the notes or edited the report was stamped with a code on the back end. This meant that the officers or recipients of the report wouldn't know who wrote which portions of the report, but the administrator, i.e, her supervisor, would.

They did so that if information was changed or input incorrectly, they would know which technician was at fault. Only the administrator had access to that information. So she shouldn't have been able to see who wrote what, but one small mistake from her supervisor, who had left his administrative access logged in, meant she did.

There, on the screen, were dozens of redacted evidence reports he logged. She retrieved the redacted notes, breathing heavily.

Her eyes scanned through the notes, a slow documentation of her supervisor logging evidence. It was clear that he didn't know who the culprit was at first. Not until she entered her report of the DNA findings. From there, it looked like he ran his own DNA test, with a sample he had labeled as "confidential" when it came back as a match, that's when he redacted almost the entire report, only leaving in unimportant details. This would effectively look to any outsider as a normal report. Even to her, if it weren't for his negligence.

Fear prickled up her spine and through her gut. Her supervisor had known who the assailant was and had immediately covered for him.

This raised more questions for her. Did the detectives know already, too? Is that why they had not initially connected the crimes? Who else was involved? Why?

One thing was answered. She was not safe. The system would show him that someone had recovered his redacted report. He would be able to see the DNA she'd run, the match it made. He would know that she knew, and that made her dangerous.

Doing nothing else. She left. Left the computer wide open, left the water bottle, left the report, left it all. Her supervisor was a workaholic, and he would check that database at home. He would find out very soon the mistake he'd made.

She took all she could and left her little apartment. She had no plan as she threw the heavy bag into the trunk of the taxi. No plan when the driver asked her where, and she said, "The airport, please," maybe she could find someone she could trust. Maybe not. Either way, staying was not an option. She'd found something she was never meant to know. It could mean something more, a whole conspiracy even.

She wanted be good, to do the right thing. But survival was louder than justice. All she knew was the she needed to run.