Chapter 7 - The Price of a Photograph
The investigator's name was Victor Sloane. His website promised discreet surveillance for wealthy families. The invoice, however, described a different service: “Witness management, media response, household credibility review.”
Daniel stood in the office where he had once planned Leah's surprise birthday dinners. Now he was looking at payments made from his own company under approvals bearing his digital signature.
“I didn't authorize these,” he told his chief financial officer, Priya Shah.
Priya pulled up the authentication log. “The requests were sent from your mother's laptop. They used the access token you gave her for travel expenses.”
“Can we stop the payments?”
“Already frozen. But Daniel, there's more.”
She turned the monitor. A report titled EMILY CARTER – PERSONAL EXPOSURE included photographs of Emily's apartment, her younger brother's college, and the children's center where she volunteered. The report rated her “financially vulnerable.”
Daniel felt sick. “My mother hired somebody to investigate our nanny?”
“Three weeks before the driveway incident.”
He called Emily and told her to be careful. She listened without interrupting.
“I'm not going into hiding because your mother collected pictures of my family,” she said. “But I'll warn my brother.”
“I'm trying to fix this.”
“Then start by telling the police you assaulted me. Without adding that you were upset.”
Daniel did exactly that. At the station, he gave a signed statement and accepted that charges might follow. The detective, Lena Ortiz, asked about the camera outage and requested the original trust documents.
As he left, Ortiz called him back.
“Mr. Whitmore, the cropped photograph your mother circulated wasn't taken by the driveway camera.”
“Then where?”
“A camera across the street. Someone had to arrange for it.”
May you like
She pointed to a small timestamp in the corner. The photograph had been taken twelve seconds before Emily reached the stroller.
Which meant the person behind the camera had been waiting for something to happen.
