Chapter 5 - Ninety Missing Seconds.
Adrian returned to Vale House at midnight without telling Claire.
She would have insisted on coming.
That was exactly why he kept the plan to himself.
He entered through a service door he had used as a teenager and headed toward the security room.
The mansion's camera system stored thirty days of footage on local servers before uploading permanent copies to a private cloud.
If the balcony fall had been recorded, someone had either erased it or replaced it.
Adrian found the night guard asleep at the desk.
The monitor showed thirty-two camera feeds.
Camera Twelve covered the second-floor balcony.
Adrian opened the archive.
At 8:41 p.m., Claire appeared on the balcony.
At 8:42, the screen jumped.
At 8:44, guests were already rushing through the hall after the fall.
Ninety seconds were gone.
Not corrupted.
Deleted.
A manual deletion log showed access from the administrator account.
Only three people had that password.
Edmund Vale.
Graham Holt.
And Adrian himself.
Someone had used Adrian's credentials.
He stared at the log until a voice behind him said his name.
"You always did prefer breaking rules to asking questions."
Edmund stood in the doorway.
Adrian did not close the screen.
"Someone deleted the fall using my account."
"Then change your password."
"That is your answer?"
Edmund stepped inside.
"My answer is that you are allowing a woman you have known for eleven months to turn you against your family."
Adrian laughed once.
"You tried that argument when Mom was alive."
Edmund's face tightened.
Evelyn Vale had been his only daughter and Adrian's mother.
She had spent her final years fighting her father over the company before dying from an aggressive cancer.
Adrian remembered her saying that Vale House was beautiful because it had learned how to hide damage.
At the time, he thought she was talking about the family.
Now he wondered if she had meant something literal.
Edmund walked to the monitor.
"Claire's father was a thief."
"You said he drove too fast."
"Both can be true."
"Prove the first one."
Edmund said nothing.
Adrian moved closer.
"Where is Mara?"
"Safe."
The answer stunned him.
"So you do know."
Edmund realized the mistake immediately.
"I know Graham arranged a temporary place for her because she was frightened."
"Frightened of whom?"
Edmund's eyes remained on the camera screen.
"People make dangerous assumptions when they are afraid."
Adrian heard a soft mechanical click behind the wall.
The monitor went black.
Then every light in the security room died.
A second later, the fire alarm began screaming.
Smoke pushed beneath the door.
Adrian grabbed Edmund by the arm.
"Move."
The hallway outside was already filling with smoke from a storage room near the server cabinet.
They stumbled toward the service stairs.
Adrian looked back once.
Flames had reached the wall containing the security drives.
The fire was too precise to be accidental.
Someone had waited until he found the missing footage log.
By the time firefighters arrived, the local server room was destroyed.
Graham appeared in the courtyard wearing an overcoat over his pajamas.
He looked genuinely shocked.
That bothered Adrian more than if he had smiled.
Claire arrived twenty minutes later despite his furious instructions to stay away.
She listened as he described the ninety missing seconds.
Then she looked toward the burned windows.
"Someone didn't erase the video tonight."
Adrian nodded.
"They erased the proof that it was erased."
Claire's phone buzzed.
An unknown sender had delivered a single photograph.
It showed Mara sitting in a dark room, holding that day's newspaper.
May you like
Across the bottom of the image were six words.
Stop looking for the blue ledger.
