Chapter 7 - THE SPARE PHONE
I kept a second phone in my desk because Bennett Development required two-factor access to several corporate systems.
Ryan knew that.
Vanessa knew it too.
“You handed her an authentication device?”
Ryan’s face reddened.
“For twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes is enough.”
“I didn’t know.”
Claire watched us from the hospital bed.
Her disappointment hurt more than anger would have.
Ryan turned toward her.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” she said.
He flinched.
Detective Brooks asked when Vanessa had borrowed the phone.
Ryan gave the date.
Three weeks earlier.
That placed the theft attempt firmly before Claire’s disappearance.
Brooks requested security logs from my office and villa.
By noon, we had another problem.
The spare phone was missing.
I had assumed it remained locked in my study.
Ryan and I returned to the villa with Detective Brooks.
The wedding decorations were still everywhere.
Half-filled champagne glasses.
White roses.
A cake nobody had cut.
Lily’s tiny pink sweater lay across a chair.
The entire house looked frozen at the moment before everything broke.
My desk drawer was empty.
No phone.
No charger.
Ryan cursed.
Then I noticed a rectangle of dust beneath several folders.
Something else had been removed.
A slim black notebook.
“What was there?” Brooks asked.
“My recovery codes.”
“For what?”
“Email. Company servers. Banking portal.”
Ryan sat down hard.
“Jesus.”
Vanessa had not borrowed access.
She had copied the keys to my life.
I opened the office-security app.
The camera covering my study showed regular footage until twelve days earlier.
Then nothing.
Brooks checked the system.
“The camera wasn’t broken.”
“What happened?”
“Administrative deletion.”
“By whom?”
She looked at the permissions.
“Mason Reed’s account.”
The estate manager.
The man who had claimed he didn’t know the hidden room was usable.
We found Mason in the kitchen speaking with another detective.
Brooks asked for his phone.
He refused.
Then she told him they would obtain a warrant.
His composure disappeared.
“I deleted the footage because Vanessa asked me to.”
Ryan stepped forward.
“Why?”
“She said it showed her changing clothes before the wedding rehearsal.”
“That camera faces my office.”
Mason swallowed.
“She said it caught something private.”
“What?”
“I didn’t watch it.”
Claire’s voice came through my phone.
I had called her on speaker.
“Mason.”
He closed his eyes when he heard her.
She continued quietly.
“You knew I was under that floor.”
“No.”
“You heard me.”
“I swear—”
“You brought me water.”
Everyone stopped moving.
Mason’s eyes opened.
Claire said one more sentence.
“The bottle had your company logo on it.”
Mason’s face collapsed.
May you like
And Detective Brooks reached for her handcuffs.
📖 Mason’s lie finally cracked, but his first explanation would make Vanessa’s role look smaller and my own look much worse. 👇
