Chapter 4 - Thirty-Seven Missing Minutes
The emergency lights came on seconds later.
Victoria yanked her hand away from Daniel.
“How dare you touch me.”
Daniel ignored her. He opened the silver box and swore under his breath.
“What?” Richard asked.
“Local recording relay. Someone installed a private system separate from the estate cameras.”
“Can you recover it?”
“Maybe.”
Richard looked at Victoria.
She shrugged. “I hired a baby-safety consultant. Perhaps they installed it.”
“What company?”
“I don’t remember.”
Richard said nothing.
That frightened Victoria more than shouting would have.
Daniel removed the unit and took it to the security office.
Ten minutes later, Richard sat in front of six monitors with Maya asleep against his chest. Ella waited nearby. Victoria stood at the back of the room with her arms folded.
Daniel typed quickly.
“Main system shows a manual interruption tonight.”
“How long?” Richard asked.
“Thirty-seven minutes.”
“What time?”
“From 7:42 to 8:19.”
Ella’s eyes widened. “That’s when it happened.”
Victoria laughed bitterly. “Convenient.”
Daniel pulled up access logs.
The command to disable the cameras had come from Richard’s personal tablet.
Richard stared at the screen.
Victoria stepped forward. “There. You see? This is ridiculous. You must have triggered something accidentally.”
“I was at the Waldorf.”
“Then someone used your tablet.”
“My tablet was with me.”
Victoria’s face changed for half a second.
Daniel leaned closer to the monitor.
“Not that tablet, sir. The older one you retired last year. Device ID matches.”
Richard remembered it immediately.
He had kept the tablet in his home office after upgrading.
“Who has access to my office?”
Daniel answered carefully. “You. Me. Mrs. Hoffman for cleaning. And Ms. Vance, after you added her fingerprint three months ago.”
Victoria’s voice rose. “So now having access makes me guilty?”
“No,” Richard said. “Lying makes me suspicious.”
She stared at him.
He continued. “You said Ella went home. She was locked downstairs. You said you never locked Maya in that room. There’s a timer, a chair, and a private camera. You said you didn’t know anything about my keys, but the key to that room disappeared.”
Victoria’s face hardened.
Then Daniel held up a hand.
“Wait.”
He had managed to restore part of the private camera file.
A grainy image appeared.
The timestamp read 7:51 p.m.
Maya stood beside the red chair.
Victoria entered the frame.
Richard leaned forward.
But there was someone else behind her.
A man in a dark jacket.
May you like
Richard knew that face.
And he had trusted that man for fifteen years.
