Chapter 5: Midnight Evidence
Martha let out a short, dry laugh that had no humor in it at all. "You really think you can fire me, Evelyn? I'm not the help. I'm your court-appointed anchor. Without me, your house of cards collapses before dawn."
She brushed past me, her shoulder intentionally clipping mine with enough force to sting, and walked down the hallway toward her ground-floor quarters near the laundry room. I didn't follow her. Instead, I turned and hurried back to my office, locking the heavy oak door behind me. I sat down at my mahogany desk, opened my laptop, and bypassed the main company network to log directly into the independent, encrypted home security server I had installed the month my husband passed.
The system required a secondary biometric scan and a two-factor code sent to my encrypted hardware key—security measures Richard Vance's tech team hadn't anticipated. I pulled up the camera archives for the past seventy-two hours, setting the playback speed to quadruple time, skipping past hours of empty hallway footage until I reached three nights prior at 2:14 AM.
There it was on the screen.
The hallway camera captured Martha standing directly in front of the wall safe. Her movements were practiced and calm as she punched in my master code—a code she must have memorized by watching my fingers over the months. She opened the heavy steel door, pulled out the thick beige envelope, and slid a duplicate set of pre-forged files back into its place. But she made one critical mistake: she didn't realize the wide-angle overhead lens captured the reflection of her phone screen in the polished glass of the framed family portrait hanging opposite the safe.
On the screen reflection, I could clearly see the text messages scrolling on her phone: an incoming chat from a contact labeled ‘RV-Direct’ containing high-resolution scans of my signature, alongside instructions on how to plant the fraudulent SEC audit notices.
I plugged a secure flash drive into the USB port and exported the entire uncompressed video file, along with the chat logs and system access timestamps. It was ironclad proof of industrial espionage, breaking and entering, and conspiracy to commit fraud.
My phone buzzed on the desk. A text from an unknown number: ‘You have until sunrise to sign the merger, Evelyn. Don't test us.’
May you like
I didn't reply. I ejected the flash drive, slipped it into the pocket of my blazer, and stood up from the desk. I walked over to the window and looked out into the quiet suburban street, watching the amber glow of the streetlights cut through the dark. Martha was still downstairs, packing her bags, believing she held all the cards. But she didn't know about the encrypted backup server, and she didn't know that I was finally done running.
I turned away from the glass, checked my pocket to ensure the drive was secure, and walked resolutely back toward the stairs to end this once and for all.
