Chapter 4 - Someone Had Been Watching
Rachel arrived twenty minutes later.
I sent the kids to her house with overnight bags.
Melissa stood in the foyer.
"You are not taking my children."
Rachel stepped between us.
"They're spending one night with their aunt."
"You don't decide that."
"Neither do you alone," I said.
Melissa looked at Owen.
Something passed across her face.
Not guilt.
Calculation.
That scared me more.
After they left, I called a security technician I trusted from work.
He found four hidden wireless cameras.
Kitchen.
Upstairs hall.
My office.
Garage.
"Can you recover footage?" I asked.
"Maybe."
Melissa laughed from the doorway.
"This is ridiculous. Grant installed them because we were having package theft."
"You put one in my office because of packages?"
She said nothing.
The technician pulled access logs.
Someone had downloaded files from my home computer at 2:13 a.m. on three different nights.
I turned toward Melissa.
"That signature on the petition."
She crossed her arms.
"I didn't forge anything."
"Then who did?"
"Ask your lawyer."
I almost answered.
Then the technician raised a hand.
"Mr. Bennett?"
He had recovered one deleted clip.
The video showed Melissa and Grant standing at our kitchen island six weeks earlier.
Grant held a plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a toothbrush.
My toothbrush.
Melissa whispered, "This better be enough."
Grant answered, "It doesn't have to be his. It just has to look like his."
My stomach turned.
Then another man entered the frame.
Gray suit.
Silver hair.
I knew him.
Walter Briggs.
Senior trust officer at First Cumberland Bank.
The institution responsible for my mother's trust.
Walter took the bag and said, "Once the court accepts the report, we freeze the boy's distribution."
Melissa asked, "And the rollover?"
Walter smiled.
"Thirty days after removal."
I stared at the screen.
This wasn't just my wife.
It was a bank officer.
Her brother.
A fake lab report.
And twelve-point-eight million dollars.
Then the technician stopped the video.
"There's another file."
He opened it.
It showed Owen alone in the kitchen late at night, eating dry cereal from the box.
Behind him, Melissa stepped into frame.
May you like
She took the box away.
And said, "If you keep making trouble, your father will choose us."
