Relief hit first. Then memory returned.
“Vanessa was there. Carol was there.”
Daniel’s expression hardened, but before he could answer, Detective Lena Ortiz entered. She explained that Carol had called emergency services nearly forty minutes later. Both women claimed they had arrived after hearing me fall. Vanessa had even cried for the paramedics.
“They say you became overwhelmed during the argument,” Ortiz said carefully. “They say you accused them, grabbed Vanessa, and slipped.”
Daniel surged to his feet.
“That’s a lie.”
“Sit down,” I whispered.
He stared at me.
“Let them believe it worked.”
The camera footage should have ended everything, but when Daniel opened the security app, the local system showed no recording. Carol had unplugged the hub. Vanessa had taken my phone, deleted messages, and cleaned the kitchen before calling for help.
They had been reckless, but not stupid.
Still, they had targeted the wrong woman.
I asked Ortiz to retrieve my phone from beneath the cabinet before Vanessa remembered it. Then I called Mira Chen, my former supervisor at Halden Forensics. Years earlier, I had investigated executives who erased evidence and called it an accident. Mira knew that deletion was often more revealing than preservation.
The security camera uploaded in ten-second encrypted fragments. Unplugging the hub stopped future footage, but everything recorded before disconnection remained on an offshore backup accessible only through my recovery key.
That key was not on my phone.
