Chapter 3 - THE MAINTENANCE CAMERA
Daniel Price walked into a Yonkers police station at three in the morning.
Bruised.
Terrified.
Alive.
He carried a flash drive.
"I copied this before they took me."
The drive held footage from a maintenance camera hidden beneath the pool equipment awning.
Emma pulled back.
Then Juliette shoved.
Emma went into the deep end.
Eleanor did not move toward the water.
Christopher felt something inside him become very still.
Daniel explained.
"I told Mrs. Pierce the alarm had to stay on."
"What did she say?"
"That it was malfunctioning."
"And when you refused to leave?"
"She threatened my job."
Two security men later forced Daniel into a company car and demanded the memory card.
They beat him.
He escaped at a rest stop.
The emergency board packet contained a psychological evaluation of Christopher.
Dr. Stephen Vale.
"I've never met him."
The report described rage episodes, grief instability, and obsessive attachment to Emma after the death of his wife, Anna.
Christopher had gone to therapy after Anna died.
Not with Vale.
Rachel traced the source.
Pierce Family Wellness Program.
Eleanor had arranged the therapist.
Someone copied Christopher's records, edited them, and turned grief into a legal weapon.
Emma listened from the bed.
"Grandma says you get crazy when people leave."
"She said that to you?"
"Lots."
"She said Mommy Anna left because she found the wrong papers."
She died in a car crash three years earlier.
Rachel pulled Anna's digital archive.
Forty-eight hours before her death, Anna had downloaded the original Pierce founder trust.
The same trust Eleanor was trying to use against Emma now.
"Open everything," he said.
Rachel did.
May you like
One encrypted folder appeared.
PIERCE TRUST - IF I DON'T COME HOME.
