Chapter 5 - The Woman on Camera
The lights went out.
Hale whispered, “Back door.”
We moved in darkness.
A flashlight beam swept across the hall behind us.
Someone called my name.
Not loudly.
Almost gently.
“Daniel.”
The voice was female.
Claire’s voice.
I stopped.
Hale grabbed my arm.
“Don’t.”
“You heard her.”
“I heard what they wanted us to hear.”
A second beam appeared.
We ran.
Hale led me through an old recovery room and out a service exit into the parking garage.
His car was already gone.
Mine had two slashed tires.
Then Hale looked up at a security camera.
“The archive.”
“What?”
“This building still records locally.”
We returned through a different door and found the security station.
The hard drive had been wiped.
Almost.
One clip remained in a hidden cache.
Three days after Claire’s legal death, a woman entered the garage.
Gray coat.
Claire’s face.
She walked beside Vanessa.
I watched them stop beside an elevator.
Vanessa handed Claire a bag.
Claire touched Vanessa’s arm.
They looked like allies.
Then another man stepped into frame.
My father.
Richard Carter.
My father had been dead six weeks before that video was recorded.
I leaned closer to the monitor.
“No.”
Hale sat down hard.
“That’s not possible.”
I grabbed the mouse and replayed it.
Same face.
Same slight limp from the motorcycle crash he had at twenty-two.
Same watch he was buried wearing.
Hale whispered, “Someone altered the footage.”
“Can they alter a limp?”
“Daniel—”
The video ended with my father turning directly toward the camera.
He raised one hand.
Not a wave.
He held up three fingers.
A childhood signal.
Three fingers meant: Don’t trust what you’re seeing.
My phone rang.
Vanessa.
I answered.
She was whispering.
“They took Noah.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“What?”
“I went to Mrs. Alvarez’s house. The back door was open. Lily was hiding under the bed. Noah is gone.”
I could barely hear her over the blood pounding in my ears.
Then a boy’s voice came through another phone near Vanessa.
Noah.
“Dad?”
A man spoke behind him.
“Bring Marcus Hale to the place your sister died.”
The line disconnected.
I looked at Hale.
He looked terrified.
“What place?” I asked.
Hale whispered, “The stairs in the photograph weren’t in your house.”
---
The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.
If you enjoyed the story, bookmark my site: https://vibe.treeiq.biz
May you like
New stories are posted daily, so check back for updates.
