Chapter 6 - The Fourth Microphone
Police searched the mansion until after dark.
They found three microphones.
One in Ava’s room.
One in Lily’s room.
One under Nathan’s desk.
Then Emma found the fourth.
It was taped beneath the kitchen island.
Nathan stared at the tiny black device while a detective sealed it inside an evidence bag.
Detective Aaron Mills was in his fifties, quiet, careful, and unimpressed by money.
“Who knew you were coming home early?” he asked.
“No one.”
“Airline?”
“My pilot.”
“Driver?”
“I drove myself from the private terminal.”
“Employees?”
“No.”
Mills looked toward Emma. “She knew after you arrived.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “She didn’t take Rachel.”
“I didn’t say she did.”
Emma stood near the sink, pale but steady.
Mills turned to her. “Who else was in the house?”
“Victoria. The girls. Me. Mrs. Palmer, the upstairs housekeeper, until two.”
Nathan frowned. “Mrs. Palmer still works here?”
Emma looked uncomfortable. “She comes twice a week now.”
“Why twice?”
“Victoria cut her hours.”
Nathan shut his eyes for one second.
Every answer revealed another decision made in his name.
Mills walked them through the timeline. Rachel’s car reached the gate at 3:42. Nathan entered the mansion at 3:36. Victoria left at 3:49.
Seven minutes.
Enough time to send one message.
But her phone was gone.
Nathan called his company’s cybersecurity director. Within an hour they had copied login records from his private accounts.
At 3:38 p.m., someone inside the mansion had opened his travel calendar through a linked household tablet.
At 3:40, that tablet sent an encrypted message through an app Nathan had never installed.
The device identifier belonged to the kitchen tablet.
Everyone turned toward the wall-mounted screen used for recipes and grocery lists.
Emma shook her head. “I use it every day. I’ve never seen that app.”
The technician opened hidden applications.
There it was.
A secure messenger.
One recent conversation had been deleted.
One message remained in cache.
HE’S HOME.
Sent at 3:40.
Mills asked, “Who was standing in this kitchen at 3:40?”
Nathan looked at Emma.
Emma looked at the girls.
Ava’s face went white.
Nathan noticed.
“Ava?”
She began crying before she spoke.
“I sent it.”
Nathan stared at his eight-year-old daughter.
“To who?”
May you like
Ava shook so badly Emma knelt beside her.
“To the man Victoria said was helping Mommy come back.”
