Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Machine
A heavy iron door slammed shut down the hall, echoing like a gunshot. David tapped the table with his knuckles. "I need you to write down your father’s secondary email and the master recovery phrase. Right now."
With shaking fingers, my hand cramping around the cheap ballpoint pen, I wrote the credentials on the legal pad. The right side of my head felt as if someone was driving hot nails into my brain, but my mind had never been clearer.
"If the cloud captured Vanessa moving Dad's lockbox," I said, my voice trembling with sudden realization, "then the camera on the kitchen wall caught the attack. It had to."
"Not necessarily the kitchen camera," David cautioned gently. "When the police searched the scene, the kitchen unit had been physically yanked from the wall and smashed on the floor. Vanessa told the cops you smashed it during your rage. But here’s the kicker, Emily: modern security cameras don't write to a hard drive; they stream live packets directly to the server. The moment she ripped it off the drywall, the preceding ten minutes were already uploaded to the remote server."
"So the footage exists."
"If Eleanor didn't log into the cloud and delete the entire account history, yes," David said. He stood up, buttoning his charcoal suit jacket. "The arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow morning at nine. The assistant district attorney is pushing for a fifty-thousand-dollar cash bail or remand without bond because of the alleged weapon. I’m heading straight to the magistrate to file an emergency preservation subpoena for the server data before your sister figures out how to wipe it."
"David," I called out, stopping him just as his hand touched the doorknob. "What was in Dad’s mahogany chest? Why would Vanessa risk everything to steal a locked wooden box the morning she assaulted me?"
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David turned back slowly, his eyes dark. "Your father was an accountant for thirty-five years, Emily. He didn't keep mementos in that chest. He kept ledgers. Receipts. Proof of every penny that ever entered or left the family business. If Vanessa took that box, she wasn't just stealing jewelry. She was destroying evidence of an embezzlement scheme that began long before today."
He left the room, leaving me alone in the freezing custody pen with the buzzing light and the steady drip of blood soaking into the gauze over my ruined ear.
