## CHAPTER 7 — SEVENTEEN MISSING SECONDS
Harrison transformed the conference room of his law firm into an evidence center before sunset.
The memory card contained one video file.
No name.
No date.
No audio.
The footage showed the courthouse staircase on the morning Khloe was attacked.
Harrison had seen every available security recording during the criminal trial.
This angle was different.
The camera had been positioned inside an office overlooking the eastern side of the steps. From there, Judith Mercer could be seen following Khloe through the courthouse doors.
Evan remained near the entrance, pretending to be shocked.
The recording confirmed everything the prosecution had proven.
Then Harrison noticed a figure standing behind a marble column.
A man in a gray suit.
He watched Judith approach Khloe.
He watched the argument begin.
He did nothing.
Three seconds before Judith pushed Khloe, the man raised his phone.
Not to call for help.
To record.
After Khloe fell, he calmly walked away.
Harrison paused the image.
The man’s face was partially hidden, but a gold courthouse identification badge was clipped to his jacket.
Khloe stood beside Harrison, holding Nora against her shoulder.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could he have been a reporter?”
“Reporters don’t receive courthouse administrative badges.”
Harrison advanced the video frame by frame.
The footage suddenly jumped.
Seventeen seconds were missing.
When the recording resumed, emergency responders had reached Khloe.
A courthouse officer was standing beside the marble column.
Cal Rourke.
The same man who had lied to Harrison that afternoon.
Leo Grant entered the conference room carrying a laptop.
“I found the sedan.”
He displayed traffic footage showing the black car leaving the courthouse.
“The license plate is registered to a shell company called Hawthorne Civic Consulting.”
“Who owns it?” Harrison asked.
“Three additional companies. The final registration leads to a post office box that closed eight years ago.”
Khloe looked at the paused image of the man in the gray suit.
“Why would someone hide footage that proves Judith pushed me?”
“Because it also proves someone else knew it was about to happen,” Harrison said.
Leo placed another document on the table.
“I searched Rourke’s employment history. He claimed he started working at the courthouse nine months ago.”
“But?” Harrison asked.
“He worked there eleven years ago under a different name.”
Harrison read the original employment record.
Calvin Rhodes.
The file said he had been dismissed for accessing sealed family-court records.
“Why was he rehired?” Khloe asked.
“He wasn’t,” Leo said. “Cal Rourke’s background check was approved without fingerprints.”
“That’s impossible,” Harrison replied.
“It should be.”
Harrison called Assistant District Attorney Dana Ruiz, the prosecutor who had helped convict Evan and Judith.
She agreed to meet them privately.
Before hanging up, however, she warned Harrison not to contact courthouse security.
“Why?” he asked.
Dana lowered her voice.
“Because Officer Rourke disappeared thirty minutes ago.”
“Disappeared?”
“He left his uniform in a restroom. His locker was empty.”
Harrison looked at the photograph of Nora.
“Find him.”
“I’m trying.”
“No. Find him before whoever hired him decides he knows too much.”
After the call ended, Nora began to cry.
Khloe carried her into the hallway.
Harrison returned to the video.
He enlarged the gray-suited man’s courthouse badge.
Most of the text was blurred.
Only two words remained readable.
FAMILY PROTECTION.
Leo leaned closer.
“There hasn’t been a department with that name in this courthouse for twenty years.”
Harrison searched the phrase in an old legal database.
One result appeared.
It was a sealed civil case involving eleven children, seven deceased parents, and a privately funded courthouse initiative.
The presiding judge’s name had been removed.
But one attorney’s signature remained visible.
Harrison stopped breathing.
It belonged to his father.
Daniel Cole had supposedly died in a car accident twenty-three years earlier.
May you like
According to the document, he had signed the sealed order two years after his death.
---
