Chapter 4: The Other Video
Claire read the message twice.
Then she looked at Noah.
"When did this come in?"
"Forty minutes ago.
While we were still in the room." He kept his voice low, angled away from Lily.
"I don't know the number.
I've never seen it before."
"Have you replied?"
"No.
I waited for you."
Lily was focused on her cake, dragging the fork through the frosting in slow, careful lines.
Claire leaned slightly closer to Noah.
"Forward it to me.
Don't delete it."
He nodded and his thumb moved across the screen.
Claire's phone buzzed in her pocket a moment later.
She didn't look at it yet.
She looked at Lily instead.
"Sweetheart," she said, "do you know if Daddy had any other cameras in the house?
Besides the ones in the hallways?"
Lily thought about it, her fork suspended in the air.
"He put one in my room," she said.
"After the bad night."
Claire kept her expression still.
"What bad night?"
"When I woke up and Grandma was in my room." Lily set the fork down on the plate.
"She was looking at my things.
Daddy got really quiet after that.
The next day he put the camera up." She pointed at the corner of the ceiling above her bed, though they were in the hallway.
The gesture was automatic.
She'd looked at that camera many times.
"He said it was so he could check on me from his phone."
"Did he ever show you what it recorded?"
"No.
But he looked at it a lot." Lily picked up the fork again.
"He looked at it the morning before he went away."
Noah's hand went still against his knee.
Claire stood up slowly.
"I'll be right back.
Noah's going to stay with you."
She walked to the far end of the hallway, past the row of framed family photographs — Marcus at every age, Evelyn always at the center — and stopped near the window.
She pulled out her phone.
The forwarded message was there.
Unknown number.
She read it again.
*Don't let them find out you have the video.
They already know about the other one.*
The other one.
Not *another video*.
*The other one.* As if whoever sent this knew exactly what both recordings contained.
She opened her contacts and called the only person she trusted with something like this.
It rang three times.
Then: "Claire."
"Diane." Claire pressed her back against the wall.
"I need you to listen carefully and not ask me how I got this information yet."
Diane was a family law attorney.
She had known Claire for eleven years.
She didn't waste words.
"Go ahead."
"I have security footage of a child being physically restrained and having her hair cut against her will while she cried.
The child is six.
The people in the footage are her grandmother and her aunt.
The child's father has been unreachable for three days and the child has been told nothing." Claire paused.
"I also have reason to believe there is a second recording.
From a camera the father installed in the child's bedroom after an incident involving the grandmother."
The line was quiet for a moment.
"Is the child safe right now?" Diane asked.
"She's with me."
"And the grandmother — is she in the same building?"
"Same building.
Twenty feet away."
"Okay." Diane's voice shifted into the register Claire recognized.
The working register.
"Don't go back into that room without me on the phone.
Don't hand over the tablet to anyone.
And find that second recording before they do."
"I don't know how to access it.
It was on Marcus's phone."
"Does he use cloud backup?"
Claire thought.
She had watched Marcus set up his phone once, two years ago, standing in her kitchen while Lily slept on the couch.
She had teased him about being the last person on earth to still do manual backups.
He had laughed and said he didn't trust the cloud with anything that mattered.
Except Lily's camera.
He had set that one up differently.
She remembered him mentioning it, offhand, in the way people mention things they want someone else to quietly remember.
*It uploads automatically.
Even if something happens to my phone, it's there.*
"It might be on a separate account," Claire said.
"Specifically for that camera."
"Find the login," Diane said.
"That's your next step.
Everything else waits."
Claire ended the call and stood at the window for a moment.
The garden below was perfectly kept.
Roses in careful rows.
A stone path leading to a locked gate.
She turned and walked back toward Noah and Lily.
Lily had finished the cake.
She was sitting with her knees pulled up, her jagged, uneven hair falling forward over her face.
She looked very small against the wide hallway floor.
"Noah," Claire said, crouching down.
"Did Marcus ever give you any account information?
Anything for a camera system?
A backup drive?"
Noah frowned.
Then something moved across his face.
Recognition.
"He gave me an envelope," he said slowly.
"About two weeks ago.
He said to keep it somewhere safe and not mention it to anyone in the house." He looked at Claire.
"He said I'd know when to open it."
Claire looked at him.
"Where is it?"
"My car," Noah said.
"Locked in the glove box."
From behind the glass door at the end of the hallway, Evelyn's shadow moved across the frosted panel.
Slow.
Deliberate.
She was standing just on the other side, listening.
May you like
Claire stood up.
"Get your keys."
