Chapter 7 - The Picture With No Steps
Daniel found the photograph in a shared household tablet Vanessa had left behind. It sat inside a folder labeled INCIDENT FOUR.
In the cropped image, his hand appeared to be yanking Lily toward him. The full original was stored in the same device's deleted-photo archive. In it, Lily's sneaker hung beyond the edge of the picnic stairs and Daniel was pulling her back to safety.
Mara told him to leave the files untouched until a technician could preserve them properly.
"She wasn't just hurting Lily," Daniel said. "She was building a story about us."
That night, June stayed for dinner. Lily insisted on setting an extra place.
"You helped me," she told June. "You get the good fork."
June's eyes filled. "That's a pretty big honor."
Afterward, Daniel replaced the home's smart-lock credentials and checked the accounts connected to the outdoor cameras. One administrator session had accessed the feed that morning, even after Vanessa left.
The login belonged to a consulting account used by Northline's technology contractor.
"How does a developer have access to my daughter's house?" Daniel asked Mara.
"We find out who granted it. And we stop it now."
A technician secured the cameras and preserved the logs. Daniel slept next door to Lily and woke whenever she stirred.
At two in the morning, she came to his door holding her stuffed rabbit.
"Can I tell you another bad thing?"
"Always."
"Vanessa hid a red folder behind the blue flowerpot by the greenhouse. She said grown-up secrets are heavier than kid secrets."
Daniel didn't go searching in the dark. He sat with Lily until she fell asleep, then told Mara what she'd said.
At dawn, with an officer present, they moved the flowerpot.
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The folder was still there.
On its cover, someone had written: ALDER STREET - DRAINAGE REVISION.
