Chapter 3 - The Blue Key
Mark's face changed when Chloe said it.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
"What blue key?" I asked.
He looked at me.
"The encrypted drive from my office."
I stared at him.
Mark owned Bennett Freight, the regional logistics company his father had built from two trucks and a rented warehouse. Mark had inherited control six years earlier. Vanessa ran finance.
"What's on it?"
"Backup accounting files. Board records. Contract approvals."
Mark ignored her.
"Chloe, where did you see it?"
"In Aunt Vanessa's purse."
Vanessa went pale.
"So the object in the image belongs to your brother?" Officer Ruiz asked.
"No."
Mark answered for her.
"Yes."
At the hospital, doctors cleared Chloe of serious injury, but she would not let go of my hand.
Mark paced near the window.
"I left that drive in my office safe."
"Who knows the code?"
"Me."
He stopped.
"And Vanessa."
"Why?"
"She set up the safe."
Mark looked sick.
"I don't know what could be on that drive that would make her risk hurting Chloe."
Dave arrived an hour later carrying a sealed evidence bag.
Officer Ruiz was with him.
"We found the memory card," she said.
"Where?"
Dave's expression hardened.
"Under the passenger seat of my van."
"She went inside your van?"
"I left the door open when I ran to Chloe."
Ruiz nodded. "We're checking prints."
Dave handed over his phone.
"The cloud file recovered part of the recording."
We watched.
Chloe stood at the curb.
Vanessa moved behind her.
Her mouth was close to Chloe's ear.
The microphone caught only six words.
"Daddy will think it was an accident."
Then Vanessa shoved.
Mark turned away.
I did not.
I watched my daughter fall.
Again.
Then the footage glitched.
For half a second, the blue drive flashed in Vanessa's hand.
Mark whispered, "That's not the backup drive."
I looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
He swallowed.
May you like
"That one belongs to my father."
His father had been dead for six years.
