Chapter 3 - The Missing Eight Minutes
Vanessa stepped aside.
Too late.
Richard had heard the fear in her voice.
Anna followed him upstairs with Leo on her hip. Vanessa came behind them, protesting that they were wasting time, that Leo needed a doctor, that everyone was emotional.
Richard ignored her.
The staircase camera sat inside a dark wooden housing above the landing. It looked ordinary until Richard pulled a chair from the hall and climbed up.
“There,” Anna said.
A second object had been taped behind the camera.
Small. Black. No bigger than a matchbox.
Richard peeled it free.
Vanessa swore under her breath.
“What is it?” Anna asked.
Richard turned it over. A tiny red diode blinked once.
“A wireless jammer.”
Vanessa laughed too quickly. “You don’t know that.”
Richard looked at her. “I own three logistics companies. We use these to test security vulnerabilities.”
“You think I put that there?”
“I think you knew I was about to find it.”
Leo whimpered.
Anna kissed his hair.
Richard took a photograph of the device, then placed it in a clean plastic bag from the linen cabinet without touching it again.
At the hospital, Leo’s scan showed no fracture or internal bleeding. The doctor diagnosed a mild concussion and ordered overnight observation.
Anna sat beside the hospital bed, holding Leo’s hand while he slept beneath a dinosaur blanket.
Richard stood near the window, speaking quietly to Nolan.
Vanessa had not come with them.
“She said she needed air,” Richard told Anna after the call ended.
Anna looked at him. “You let her leave?”
“I had security follow her.”
“And?”
“She drove straight to her condo.”
Anna rubbed her cut palm. “Richard, she pushed him.”
His eyes met hers.
“I believe you.”
The words broke something open in Anna’s chest. She had been bracing for doubt since the moment Vanessa lied.
“But believing you isn’t enough,” Richard continued. “If she planned this, I need to know why.”
Anna looked at sleeping Leo.
She had an answer she did not want to say aloud.
For months, Vanessa had complained that Anna had changed Richard. That he no longer listened to family. That the Mercer company would eventually belong to “an outsider and her child.”
Before Anna could speak, Richard’s phone buzzed.
Nolan.
Richard answered on speaker.
“I found something,” Nolan said.
“The missing footage?” Anna asked.
“Not from the staircase camera.”
A keyboard clicked.
“The Mercer system backs motion alerts to a separate cloud queue before full video uploads. The jammer killed the main stream, but it didn’t stop every thumbnail.”
Richard’s face changed. “What did it capture?”
Nolan hesitated.
“One image at 7:17 and forty-nine seconds.”
“Send it.”
The phone chimed.
Richard opened the image.
Anna stared.
Leo stood at the top step.
May you like
Vanessa stood directly behind him.
And Vanessa’s hand was pressed flat against the middle of his back.
