Chapter 6 - The Missing Hour Returns.
For several seconds, I heard nothing but the faint electronic hiss of the phone line.
Then I asked the only question that mattered.
"What did Roland do when he realized Isabella had seen him?"
My wife breathed in slowly.
"He told her he was a repairman."
"And she believed him?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because she had seen his picture before."
My hand tightened around the phone.
"Where?"
"In my office drawer."
I stood from the desk.
"Why did you have his picture?"
"I kept old company material."
"You kept a photograph of the man blackmailing you in a drawer Isabella could open?"
"I didn't think she knew who he was."
"That is not an answer."
My wife went quiet.
I forced myself back to the missing hour.
"What happened next?"
"Roland asked her to go upstairs."
"Did she?"
"Yes."
"Then what?"
"He told me I had become unreliable."
"Meaning you wanted out."
"Yes."
"He wanted the archive."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it had everything."
"The office recordings?"
"And the messages he sent through the camera account."
I looked toward the archive drive on Lena's workstation.
"What messages?"
"Instructions."
"Why would he leave instructions on the same system?"
"He thought he controlled it."
"He did until yesterday."
"Yes."
I stared through the study window.
Isabella sat at the kitchen table with Rachel.
She was coloring carefully inside the lines.
"What did Roland say about Isabella?"
My wife hesitated.
That hesitation made my chest tighten.
"Beatriz."
"He said she had become a liability."
The word felt obscene when applied to a six-year-old child.
"What did you say?"
"I told him to leave her out of it."
"After months of using her to stage scenes?"
"I know what I did."
"No."
My voice dropped.
"You know what you want to admit now."
She did not answer.
"What did he mean by liability?"
"He was afraid she would mention seeing him."
"To me?"
"To anyone."
"What did he do?"
"He went upstairs."
I stood so quickly the chair struck the wall.
"You let him go upstairs?"
"I followed him."
"Where was Isabella?"
"In her room."
"What happened?"
"He told her she had misunderstood what she saw."
"What else?"
"He said grown-ups sometimes lose jobs when children tell stories that aren't true."
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
Not a threat shouted in anger.
Something worse.
A carefully worded idea placed into a child's mind.
If she spoke, someone would suffer.
If she stayed quiet, everyone remained safe.
That was how fear had been built around her.
"Did you stop him?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Immediately."
"Do not give me clean answers now."
I pressed my hand against the desk.
"Tell me what actually happened."
My wife inhaled shakily.
"I told him to get out."
"And?"
"He laughed."
"And?"
"He said I had spent four months proving I would choose myself over your family, so I should not pretend to have principles now."
I said nothing.
"He was right about one thing."
"What?"
"I had already gone too far."
The line sounded like remorse.
I refused to let remorse rewrite responsibility.
"What happened to the footage during that hour?"
"He deleted it."
"How?"
"From my laptop."
"So he had admin access."
"Yes."
"What did the cameras record before he erased it?"
"Everything."
"His conversation with Isabella?"
"Yes."
"Your argument?"
"Yes."
"Then why erase it?"
"Because I told him I had copied messages and that if he came near her again, I would turn everything over to you."
I looked toward Lena.
She was still working in the kitchen.
"Where are those copies?"
"I hid them."
"Where?"
My wife went silent again.
"Beatriz."
"If I tell you, Roland will know I told you."
"He already knows the system is compromised."
"He has people inside your company."
"One person or more?"
"I don't know."
"Who knows your location right now?"
"No one."
"Where are you?"
"I'm not telling you."
"That is convenient."
"It is safer."
"For whom?"
"For Isabella."
My temper rose.
"Do not use her as the reason for another secret."
"I'm not."
"You took her passport."
"To stop Roland from taking it."
That answer was so unexpected I almost missed it.
"What?"
"He asked where her passport was yesterday."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"You expect me to believe he casually asked about my daughter's passport?"
"No."
Her voice cracked.
"I think he wanted leverage."
My stomach turned.
"Where is it now?"
"With me."
"Return it tonight."
"I will give it to Rachel."
"When?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Tonight."
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because I am not coming back to the house."
"Then send it with a courier."
She hesitated.
"Fine."
I ended the call only after she agreed to a tracked delivery directly to Rachel's office.
Then I told Lena everything.
She immediately returned to the hidden partition.
"If he deleted only file references, the data may still be recoverable."
"How much?"
"Maybe all of it."
"And if he securely wiped it?"
"Then very little."
She began a deeper scan.
Rachel sat across from me.
"We also need to deal with your company."
"I know."
"Do you have internal security?"
"Yes."
"Do you trust them?"
I started to answer.
Then stopped.
Two days earlier, I would have said yes immediately.
Now somebody inside my company had apparently known about my flight change before my wife did.
"I trust individuals."
"Which ones?"
"My operations director, Claire Bennett."
"Anyone else?"
"My general counsel, Nathan Cole."
Rachel raised an eyebrow.
"Cole?"
"No relation to Beatriz."
"You are sure?"
"I was."
I hated hearing myself say it.
"Call Claire first."
I did.
Claire answered from the office.
"Welcome home early."
I froze.
"How did you know?"
A pause.
"Your driver canceled tomorrow's airport pickup."
That made sense.
Maybe.
I did not tell her the real reason I was calling.
Instead, I created a test.
"Something changed with the Riverside acquisition."
"What?"
"The board wants me to lower our ceiling to forty-eight million."
That number was false.
No such board conversation had happened.
Claire reacted exactly as I expected.
"That makes no sense."
"I know."
"Who approved it?"
"No one yet."
"Do you want me to tell Nathan?"
"No."
"Anyone?"
"No."
I paused.
"Keep it between us."
"Understood."
I ended the call.
Rachel watched me.
"You just planted information."
"Yes."
"Why that number?"
"Because Mercer Vale is preparing a competing offer on Riverside."
"If the number leaks?"
"We know Claire or someone monitoring Claire's communications is compromised."
Rachel nodded slowly.
"Do not turn your company into a private sting operation without counsel."
"I won't."
"Good."
"I am calling Nathan next."
She sighed.
"Of course you are."
I gave Nathan a different false number.
Fifty-three million.
Same story.
Same instruction.
Tell no one.
Then I called my chief financial officer, Victor Lane.
I gave him a third number.
Fifty-one million.
By midnight, three different numbers existed in three different conversations.
Only one would matter if Mercer Vale moved.
At 1:18 a.m., Lena called me into the kitchen.
"I recovered video fragments from the missing hour."
My pulse jumped.
"How much?"
"About nine minutes total."
"Show me."
The first fragment showed Roland entering through the side door.
He looked exactly like Marta's photograph.
The second showed him in the kitchen arguing with my wife.
The audio broke every few seconds.
But enough survived.
Roland said,
"You had one job today."
My wife answered,
"She got hurt."
"That was not the point."
"I'm done using her."
Roland laughed.
"You are done when I say you are done."
The fragment ended.
The next clip showed Isabella standing at the top of the stairs.
She had heard them.
Roland looked up.
His face changed.
Then the file skipped.
The next recoverable section showed him kneeling outside Isabella's bedroom.
His voice was calm.
"Sometimes grown-ups say things during business that children misunderstand."
Isabella stood inside the doorway.
"I heard you say Dad."
Roland smiled.
"That is exactly what I mean."
The video corrupted.
Then returned.
"If you repeat something wrong, people can lose their jobs."
Isabella's face tightened.
"Even Dad?"
Roland did not answer directly.
He said,
"Smart girls know when something is private."
My hand clenched into a fist.
Lena paused the video.
"Do you want me to stop?"
"No."
The next fragment showed my wife entering the hallway.
"Get away from her."
Roland stood.
"What are you going to do, Beatriz?"
"I said leave."
He smiled.
Then he said something the camera captured perfectly.
"Tomorrow Aaron will think this entire house is your fault."
My wife's face went white.
Roland continued.
"And if you tell him about me, I'll make sure he learns exactly what you did before you met him."
The clip ended.
Rachel exhaled slowly.
"That helps explain her fear."
"It does not excuse her."
"No."
"It does not erase what she did to Isabella."
"No."
I stared at the frozen image of my wife in the hallway.
For the first time, I could see both truths at once.
She had been manipulated by Roland.
And she had manipulated my daughter.
One truth did not cancel the other.
At 2:07 a.m., my phone buzzed with an email alert from an industry news service.
Mercer Vale had revised its Riverside acquisition guidance.
Their new internal target had leaked to a reporter.
Forty-eight million.
May you like
Claire's number.
The House Without Red Lights
