"Alright, let's watch it." Emma immediately suggests that they watch it causing Lizzie to take out the laptop they were using earlier and then hold her hand out so Matt can hand her the disc, which he does.
"The screen got small again." Landon mildly complains about the fact the screen has gotten small, having Josie siphon some magic from the school and make the screen large again while Lizzie opens the disc part of the computer to put the CD of the gas station footage in.
Lizzie then focuses her time on looking for the footage with the date that matches the one when Hope disappeared, finding it in a matter of minutes.
"Did he say if the cameras had audio?" Lizzie decides to ask Matt if the clerk said the cameras have audio hooked up to it before she plays the footage.
"Yeah, it has audio." Matt confirms that the cameras have audio, which Lizzie gives nods at then plays it.
The footage starts off with the station being empty, except for the clerk, who is sitting in a chair behind the desk and reading a magazine while whistling the tune of 'Whistle While You Work' from Snow White.
Already bored with the whistling after two minutes have passed, Lizzie fast forwards it for a minute before playing it as the door opens.
An unknown girl enters the building, but you can't see her face, and goes up to the counter.
"Hello. Do you have playing cards here?" the unknown woman greets the clerk before wondering if they sell playing cards and the clerk nods.
"Uh, yes we do. I'll lead you to the aisle." the clerk agrees that they sell playing cards and gets off the chair and moves to the front of the desk in order to lead the girl to the aisle.
He returns after a moment and a few moments later, Hope walks into the gas station, wearing the leather jacket they found in the car, but just heads straight to the bathroom.
Hope walks out of the bathroom and starts to head to the counter but glances over to see the slushie machine.
She heads over to it and smiles when she sees they have grape flavor so she grabs a cup in order to fill it.
Once she's done, she puts a lid on it, grabs a straw and heads over to the counter.
"Hey." Hope greets the clerk with a smile as she places the slushie in on the counter.
"Um, I'm going to be getting gas, can I just pay here?" Hope questions if she can pay for the gas in the building.
"If you know how much it will cost to fill up that entire tank then yeah, you can." the clerk confirms that she can pay in the store but only if she knows how much money she'd need to fill it.
"I did the math in the car before I walked in. So, I'll just give you fifty bucks and you can keep the change." Hope admits that she did the math before she walked in as she starts to take her wallet out of her pocket then rifles through the wallet and just gives him fifty dollars, yet not a fifty dollar bill.
"This doesn't cover the slushie, does it? Um, here." Hope realizes that the money for the gas doesn't cover the payment for the slushie then places a five dollar bill on the counter after she looks back to see the price of the slushies.
"Alright, thank you." the clerk puts the money in the cash register, thanking her for not stealing the slushie and Hope gives him a smile as she places her wallet back in her pocket then heads out to the car after grabbing her slushie.
Hope just starts filling up the car with gas before she takes a sip of her slushie and then her phone begins to ring.
"Hello?" Hope greets the person with a hello even though she didn't even look at the caller id of who was calling.
"Hi. Why are you calling?" Hope wonders why Josie's calling, not sounding annoyed in any way.
"That's because I am at a gas station now and not in the woods." Hope explains why her side of the phone is no longer staticy before taking a sip of her slushie.
"My slushie." Hope replies to the question and there's silence on the other end.
"What? I am only making the one side-stop and I saw that they had a slushie machine. Stop judging." Hope demands Josie stop judging her after explaining why she has a slushie.
"I can see you judging me from here." Hope exclaims that she can see Josie judging her, despite the fact that they're on opposite ends of the phone.
"Wait, why are you whispering?" Hope has just realized that Josie's been whispering the entire time and decides to question it.
"She's practicing victory speeches?" Hope questions if Lizzie's practicing a victory speech.
"Oh, how is that going?" Hope wonders how the speech is going which causes Josie to sigh in exasperation.
"That bad?" Hope sees through Josie's unconvincing tone of voice.
"Self-centered." Hope speaks Josie's mind by saying that the speech is self-centered.
Hope removes the pump from the car as filling up the tank is done while she nods at whoever is talking as though she's silently agreeing with what's being said.
"Alright. Uh, I'm going to find a back-road in order to cut my time down." Hope confirms the fact that the call should end but assures Josie that she's gonna find a back-road to use so she can get back to the school faster then she ends the call and puts her phone back in her pocket.
Hope then takes off the leather jacket, places it in the backseat of the car before getting in the vehicle and driving away from the gas station.
A minute later, the unknown woman that walked in before Hope, walks out, gets in her own car and drives off in the same direction that Hope did.
"Who was she talking to?" MG breaks the silence that was there for a moment, as he wonders who Hope was talking to.
"Me. She was talking to me. That was our third phone conversation." Josie shyly admits that Hope was talking to her, as it was their third phone call.
"She mentioned victory speeches. Were you on the phone with her while I was reciting speeches?" Lizzie makes it clear that she took note of the term 'victory speeches' then asks in a slightly demanding tone, if Josie was making that phone call while she was practicing speeches and Josie looks away from her evasively, seemingly guilty.
"I think that person was following her. The girl who walked in before her, left after her and drove in the same direction that she did. Hope was being followed, so it's now possible that Hope deliberately crashed the car." Rafael turns the topic to the fact that Hope was most likely being followed then brings up MG's point on the possibility of the fact that she purposefully crashed the car.
"It did look like they were following her after she left but that girl showed up before Hope did, so they clearly weren't following her the entire time." Penelope agrees that it looked like the unknown girl was trailing Hope but not for the entire time as she entered the gas station before Hope even got to the gas station.
"I'm not sure what I understand less; the fact that a gas station sells playing cards or the fact that someone goes to a gas station solely for playing cards." Landon speaks up with his uncertainty of what makes less sense to him, which has them all thinking about this.
"Yeah, neither of those really make any sense." Davina sides with Landon in the fact that none of the things that he brought up actually make sense.
"This disc isn't very helpful. I think we need to look at the actual cameras from the gas station." Josie determines that the disc of the footage isn't helpful and believes that they should go back to the gas station.
"Right, well while you do that, I'll hold down the fort that is the school." Lizzie encourages them to go back to the gas station but makes it clear that she'll be staying after she picks up a flashlight.
"You're going to hold down the fort with a flashlight?" Josie stares at her sister with an incredulous look as her tone is seemingly curious.
"Yep. Flashlights can make good weapons without fear of injuring a bystander, like a gun or a knife would." Lizzie confirms that she will, in fact, actually hold down the fort with a flashlight, claiming it as a harmful, yet not deadly, weapon.
Josie just continues to silently stare at Lizzie incredulously, unsure of what to say about what recently came out her sister's mouth.
"Yeah, okay, just be sure to lock all the doors and windows." Penelope agrees that Lizzie stays behind but then makes a snarky comment about locking all the doors and windows which seems to have Lizzie reconsider, as she hooks arms with MG.
"Right, so MG holds the flashlight and we follow your car lights." Lizzie changes her mind and decides to tag along, but only if MG holds the flashlight, implying the two of them will walk, following the car.
Penelope smirks at the fact that Lizzie changed her mind and Josie face-palms, still unsure why Lizzie is all of sudden afraid of the dark.
"You two shouldn't walk at night." Dorian joins in, claiming that they shouldn't walk but Lizzie simply scoffs.
"This group has expanded even more. Clearly not all of us are fitting in the car, even if you put all of the smallest people in the trunk. If it makes you feel better, we'll take my dad." Lizzie points out that due to the group expanding, there won't be enough room in the car no matter what they do then claims that they'll have Alaric with them while they follow the car.
"Good point. Another solution is that not all of us leave the school." Rafael speaks up, seeming to understand Lizzie's point before giving out a suggestion that they don't all go back to the gas station.
"True, but who'd actually make the decision to stay behind?" Josie agrees with Rafael's solution but wonders who would stay behind, seeing as how they all want to bring Hope back safely and be involved in the new things that turn up or are revealed.
"Let's put it to a vote. All in favor of going back to the gas station?" MG immediately comes up with the solution that they vote before asking who wants to go back to the gas station and raises his hand, meaning that he wants to.
Lizzie, Josie, Alaric, Roman, Kol, Rebekah, Freya, Klaus, Hayley, Matt, and Davina all raise their hands alongside MG but no one else does.
"That's twelve people. It should be easier to fit twelve people in a car." MG counts all the people raising their hand, including himself, then claims that they should have an easier time of fitting in the car.
"Alright, we will be back." Alaric assures the rest of the room they'll be back and the twelve of them leave to go back to the gas station.
They reach the gas station, which is still crawling with police, get out of the car, and head into the gas station.
"Got to pee, got to pee, got to pee." Lizzie rushes to the bathroom the second they enter the building and Josie just sighs.
"She has the bladder of a squirrel." Josie comments that her sister has a low bladder as she simply shakes her head.
"Why didn't she pee before we left?" Matt wonders why Lizzie didn't use the bathroom beforehand.
"She did." Alaric and Josie simultaneously admit that Lizzie did use the bathroom before they left, which explains Josie's comment on her twin's bladder.
Once Lizzie returns, they head over to the counter in order to look at the camera footage.
"Let's see what happened." Matt mutters under his breath as he plays the footage from earlier.
The clerk is doing the same thing he was in the footage from a month ago, except he's reading a different magazine and whistling a different song.
"Does this guy do anything else outside of reading and whistling?" Lizzie impatiently wonders if the clerk does anything else while Matt changes two of the cameras to the outside ones and has the other ones remain inside the building.
Matt starts fast forwarding the footage as nothing is going on inside or outside the gas station for a while, until you see the clerk heading to the dumpster because he walked out of the building and changed one of the garbage bags before heading back inside.
After thirty minutes of fast forwarding, you see a car pull up to the gas station, which has Matt play it normally.
The dead guy who was found by the dumpster gets out of the car and heads into the building.
The guy just walks down an aisle, grabs a big bag of doritos then heads over to the slushie machine and gets himself a large blue one before going to the counter.
"Is that it?" the clerk asks the guy if that's all he's getting and the man nods.
"Yep. Along with some gas." the guy confirms that it's all he's getting but adds that he'll also get gas.
The clerk just nods at this as the guy pays for the two things that he came in for then the man leaves the building to head to the car and starts putting gas in it while he drinks his slushie.
The guy doesn't fill his car with much gas before he puts the pump back then closes his car's gas tank.
They see the man use hand sanitizer before he opens his bag of doritos to start eating them but mere seconds after he starts eating the doritos, another car pulls up.
An unknown, unseen, woman steps out of the car and heads over to him, snatching the slushie from him, throwing it in the garbage, before stealing the bag of doritos.
"Hey." the guy looks both annoyed and confused by this girl's manners but before he can protest more, she drags him to the dumpster and breaks his neck with ease.
The woman just props him up on the side of the dumpster then takes out a container of blood and starts covering his body with it, so he looks like how he did when Lizzie found him, before burying the container deep within the dumpster.
Afterwards, the woman heads back to her car and gets in it, but she clearly doesn't get in the driver's seat, before it just drives off.
When you look at the cameras on the inside of the building, the clerk is doing the same thing he was when the footage started, having not seen a thing.
"She threw out his slushie and then stole his doritos. What a jerk." Davina voices her distaste for the woman who just killed a man, calling her a jerk.
"He was just a guy who was getting gas, doritos, and a slushie. I hardly think that's a reasonable excuse to kill someone." Rebekah voices her own distaste for the woman, indirectly agreeing with Davina that she was a jerk.
"Weren't you the person who once said that a woman can kill a man with the right motivation?" Matt questions why Rebekah has distaste for the woman, quoting her own words and she nods at this.
"Yes, with the proper motivation. She just killed him for no reason after she stole his doritos. And I will have you know, that I have never killed anyone who was in the middle of eating food, or eating in general." Rebekah confirms Matt's words but makes it clear that what the woman did on the footage didn't seem to have any motivation then admits that she's never killed anyone while they were eating.
"Yeah, I'm known for killing innocents and even I think that was a bit absurd." Klaus joins the conversation, it being clear that the death they just witnessed was pointless.
"That is how you know when a death is pointless." Kol mutters a remark that they now know the man's death was pointless due to Klaus' words.
"Okay, let's go back to the live footage a month ago." Matt chuckles slightly as a way to agree with Kol's point then advises that they see the live footage from the day Hope went missing.
Matt then rewinds the footage all the way back to the day of Hope's car accident, which seems to be pointless as they just see what the disc of the footage had already shown them.
"Well, that was stupid. The only new thing that we got from the footage was how the guy died and was propped against the dumpster." Lizzie expresses her annoyance with the fact the footage didn't give them much information as she crosses her arms and pouts.
"I'm going to have some officers check out the dumpster. That woman put the container that was formerly filled with blood in it, maybe it's still there." Matt leaves to talk to some fellow officers to have them check the dumpster after he assumes that the container the woman stashed could still be there.
Low-and-behold, mere moments after Matt leaves, the officers find the container that was seen in the video that the unknown woman used.
"We'll head back to the school and get this processed. It's possible that the person left fingerprints." Matt recommends that they go back to the school in order to get the container processed and analyzed so they all head back.
They get back to the school, where most of them are dozing off but Emma woke up when she heard the library door open.
"What did you guys figure out?" Emma gets straight to business, not even greeting them, as she wonders what they figured out.
"Not much. Just how the dead man by the dumpster died and some new evidence." MG informs her that they didn't learn much information and Emma just nods understandingly as Roman walks over to Antoinette, who dozed off while reading a book.
"An, wake up." Roman gently nudges Antoinette awake, softly whispering that she wakes up, which she does.
"Hey, what's up?" Antoinette sleepily greets him then immediately takes a concerned tone as she notes his facial expression.
"We need to talk." Roman's tone and expression are serious as he tells his sister that they need to have a talk causing Antoinette to nod in agreement.