Chapter 3 - The Missing Two Minutes
Vanessa denied everything.
The access tag.
The office.
The kick.
Even Caleb’s version of the spilled champagne.
By midnight, she had changed her story three times.
That hurt more than the shouting.
He had proposed to Vanessa eleven weeks earlier.
He knew how she took her coffee, which side of the bed she preferred, and exactly how she smiled when photographers appeared.
Now he realized he did not know what she did when nobody important was watching.
Naomi sat with the estate’s security director, Marcus Hale.
The main ballroom feed had gone dark from 9:07 to 9:09 p.m.
Exactly when Vanessa kicked her.
Marcus frowned at the console.
“Remote shutdown.”
“From where?”
“Administrator terminal.”
“Who has admin access?”
“Me. Adrian. Evelyn.”
“And Vanessa got temporary event credentials this morning.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Vanessa snapped:
“For lighting controls.”
“Those credentials shouldn’t reach cameras.”
“Shouldn’t?”
Marcus checked logs again.
“Someone changed the permission set.”
“Using whose account?”
“Mine.”
“There. Ask him.”
“I didn’t do this.”
Not because he looked innocent.
Because whoever did it wanted him visible.
“Show me secondary systems,” she said.
The estate had six devices Vanessa did not know about.
Two exterior license-plate cameras.
A backup hallway camera.
A package-delivery camera.
And a tiny archival camera above the old ballroom clock installed after a theft years earlier.
The clock camera had no audio.
But its angle caught the marble floor.
The footage showed Vanessa step forward.
“That proves I lost my balance.”
Caleb whispered:
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You are fired.”
Adrian said:
“No.”
“You don’t fire anyone here.”
“Adrian.”
“Did you kick her?”
“I was angry.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Naomi had seen that technique before.
Emotion used to change the question.
Then Marcus interrupted.
“There’s more.”
He enlarged the footage.
Seconds before the kick, Vanessa had something in her hand.
Naomi remembered seeing it fall near the service door.
Then Vanessa attacked her.
Adrian looked at Naomi.
“Where is it?”
Naomi reached into a sealed evidence pouch.
“Right here.”
Naomi moved one step back.
And Adrian finally understood.
“The kick wasn’t about champagne.”
Naomi looked at him.
“No.”
May you like
She held up the drive.
“It was about this.”
