Chapter 3 - the first lie)
Police took Mark’s phone before sunset.
They also took Victoria’s.
Elena’s phone was copied and returned.
Sophie remained under observation, sleeping peacefully in a hospital bassinet while Elena sat beside her.
Mark stood near the window.
Outside, evening settled over the parking structure.
“Who is M?” Elena asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Could Victoria have added the contact?”
“Yes.”
“Could she have used your phone?”
Mark nodded slowly.
“She knows my passcode.”
“Then why send herself messages?”
“Maybe M isn’t her.”
Elena looked at Sophie.
“She knew the camera was off.”
Mark said nothing.
“She also knew when to take Sophie upstairs.”
“I know.”
Elena turned toward him.
“Do you?”
The question hurt him.
She could see it.
But Mark did not become defensive.
“Not enough.”
He sat across from her.
“How long has she been threatening you?”
“She never threatened me directly until today.”
“What did she say before?”
“Things that could sound harmless if I repeated them.”
“Try me.”
Elena remembered Victoria standing at the kitchen island two weeks earlier, stirring coffee without drinking it.
“She told me employees who get too attached to wealthy families sometimes make mistakes.”
Mark frowned.
“What kind of mistakes?”
“She said they forget whose children they’re holding.”
Mark’s fingers curled around the edge of the chair.
“What else?”
“She told me you had fired the nanny before me because she became unstable.”
“Claire?”
Elena nodded.
Mark looked genuinely confused.
“Claire resigned.”
“That isn’t what Victoria told me.”
Mark leaned back.
“She said Claire moved to Seattle.”
“She told me Claire had become obsessed with you.”
Mark stared at her.
“I barely knew Claire.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Mark took his phone from his pocket, forgetting for a second that police had confiscated it.
His hand closed around nothing.
“I need to find Claire.”
A nurse entered and told them Sophie could likely go home in the morning if no symptoms appeared overnight.
Home.
The word felt different now.
Elena pictured the staircase.
Victoria at the top.
The security camera going dark.
“I’m not taking Sophie back there until the house is cleared,” Mark said.
The nurse nodded politely.
When she left, Elena said, “Where will you go?”
“My parents had a guest property outside town. It’s empty.”
“Victoria knows about it?”
“Yes.”
Mark thought for a moment.
“I’ll arrange private security.”
Elena stood.
“Then Sophie doesn’t need me tonight.”
Mark looked surprised.
“Elena.”
“She has you. She has nurses. I should go home.”
“You can’t go home alone.”
Elena almost laughed.
“I’ve been going home alone for years.”
“Someone just sent a threat connected to what you witnessed.”
“The message was sent to you.”
“Because they know you’re with me.”
Elena understood his point.
She disliked that she understood it.
“Where do you expect me to go?”
“The guest property.”
“No.”
“You’ll have your own room.”
“No.”
“You’re Sophie’s nanny.”
“Right now I’m a witness in a criminal investigation involving your wife.”
Mark fell silent.
Elena softened slightly.
“I care about Sophie more than I can explain. But I need boundaries.”
“You’re right.”
That answer surprised her.
Mark nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
Elena picked up her bag.
“I’ll stay until Sophie is discharged.”
Mark nodded again.
“Thank you.”
At 9:15 p.m., Detective Nora Hayes arrived.
She was calm, direct and impossible to distract.
She listened to Elena’s entire account without interruption.
When Elena finished, Hayes asked one question.
“Did Victoria say anything immediately before she threw Sophie?”
Elena frowned.
“No.”
“Think carefully.”
Elena closed her eyes.
She saw Victoria at the top of the stairs.
Sophie in her arms.
Sunlight on the white wall.
Victoria looking down.
There had been something.
Not words directed at Elena.
A whisper.
Elena opened her eyes.
“She said, ‘Now you’ll understand.’”
Mark turned.
“What?”
“I forgot.”
Hayes leaned forward.
“Exact words?”
“I think so.”
“Who was she talking to?”
“I assumed me.”
“But now?”
Elena shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Hayes wrote something down.
“We recovered partial logs from the security system.”
Mark sat straighter.
“Anything useful?”
“The camera was disabled using your credentials.”
“We know that.”
“What you don’t know is that someone scheduled the camera to reactivate automatically.”
Elena looked at her.
“When?”
“Three minutes after the fall.”
Mark went still.
Hayes continued.
“That suggests whoever disabled it expected the incident to happen inside a specific window.”
Elena felt the same cold sensation again.
Victoria had not simply lost control.
Someone had planned the timing.
“Did it reactivate?” Mark asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it recorded afterward.”
“For twenty seven seconds.”
“What did it capture?”
Hayes studied him.
“Victoria at the bottom of the staircase.”
Mark waited.
“And?”
“Elena holding Sophie.”
“That doesn’t prove what happened.”
“No.”
Hayes paused.
“It also captured Victoria looking directly at the camera.”
Elena remembered Victoria’s terror when she had pointed toward it.
“What did she do?”
Hayes opened her tablet.
“We don’t have video because the main recorder disappeared.”
“Then how do you know?”
“The camera stores still image thumbnails separately.”
Hayes turned the tablet around.
The image quality was poor.
But Victoria was clearly visible.
She stood near the stairs, looking upward.
Her face was calm.
Her right hand was raised toward the camera.
Two fingers extended.
Mark stared.
“What does that mean?”
Hayes enlarged the photograph.
Victoria was not simply raising two fingers.
She was pointing beyond the camera.
Toward something behind it.
Elena suddenly remembered the upstairs console table.
A decorative mirror hung directly opposite the hallway.
The mirror reflected part of the corridor that the camera itself could not see.
In the thumbnail, beside Victoria’s shoulder, a distorted figure appeared in that reflection.
Someone was standing upstairs.
Watching.
Mark whispered, “There was someone else.”
May you like
Hayes nodded.
“And we believe Victoria knew exactly who it was.”
