Chapter 3 - The Missing Minutes
The camera had never gone offline before.
Ryan knew because he had paid too much money for a security system that sent alerts if a leaf moved the wrong way near our driveway.
“There should be a backup,” he said.
“There is,” Detective Harper replied. “Cloud storage. Those eleven minutes are missing there too.”
“Deleted?”
“Possibly.”
“Who can do that?” I asked.
Ryan answered before she could.
“Me. Emma. The security company.”
He stopped.
“And Linda.”
I turned to him.
He looked sick.
After his father died, Ryan had given Linda an emergency code because she still stayed with us sometimes. I had complained then. He told me family shouldn’t need to ask permission to enter family homes.
Detective Harper asked for our phones.
Linda objected.
Loudly.
By midnight, Lily was cleared to go home. I refused to return to the house while Linda still had access to it, so Ryan booked a hotel suite near the hospital.
He spent twenty minutes resetting locks and security codes from his laptop.
I spent twenty minutes watching Lily breathe.
At 1:13 a.m., my phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
YOU NEED SLEEP. YOU’RE SEEING THINGS.
I showed Ryan.
His face hardened. “That could be anyone.”
“Who else knows what Linda said?”
He didn’t answer.
Then Detective Harper called.
“We found something on Mrs. Carter’s phone,” she said.
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“A photograph of a handwritten note.”
“What note?”
There was a pause.
“It says: ‘If Emma has another episode, call Ryan before she hurts the baby.’”
I stood so quickly the hotel chair fell backward.
“I have never had an episode.”
“I know,” Harper said. “That’s why I’m asking whether you recognize the handwriting.”
She sent the photograph.
I enlarged it.
Every letter leaned slightly to the right. The capital E curled inward.
May you like
It looked exactly like my handwriting.
Except I had never written it.
