Chapter 3 - The Backup
Daniel stared at Arthur’s screen.
“Who?”
Arthur typed back.
Nora replied with one name.
MILES.
Miles Chen was the estate’s twenty-four-year-old junior systems technician, the person nobody noticed unless the Wi-Fi stopped working.
Three months earlier, after a ransomware scare, he had quietly installed an isolated backup server in the gardening office. Eleanor knew about the main system. She did not know about the backup.
Arthur called him.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
“Find him,” Daniel said.
Arthur started toward the elevator, but the doctor stopped him.
“Mr. Vance, your wife is asking for both of you.”
Sarah lay pale beneath hospital lights, monitors surrounding her.
Daniel rushed to her side.
“I’m here.”
She grabbed his hand.
“Did you believe Arthur?”
The question hit him harder than an accusation.
“Sarah—”
“Did you?”
Daniel looked down.
“I believe you.”
“Now?”
He flinched.
For months Sarah had told him Eleanor hated her. Daniel had called it tension. He had explained away insults, canceled invitations, and money suddenly withheld from charities Sarah supported.
He had kept asking Sarah to be patient.
Now patience had almost killed her.
“I should have listened sooner.”
Sarah turned her face away as tears gathered.
A nurse entered and checked the fetal monitor.
The baby’s heartbeat dipped.
Everyone went still.
Then it climbed again.
“Please,” Sarah whispered. “Don’t let her near our child.”
“I won’t.”
At the Vance estate, Detective Ortiz found Miles’s workroom unlocked.
His laptop was gone.
So was his coat.
Nora stood in the doorway. “He never leaves during a shift.”
Ortiz looked at the empty desk.
“Did Eleanor know he managed the camera system?”
“Everyone did.”
Outside, rain began tapping against the greenhouse roof.
A groundskeeper ran in.
“Detective? There’s a car by the service road.”
They found Miles’s compact sedan half-hidden behind a line of cypress trees. The driver’s door was open.
His phone lay facedown in the mud.
No Miles.
Ortiz scanned the road.
Tire marks cut across the wet gravel.
Not one vehicle.
Two.
Back at the hospital, Daniel received a call from Eleanor.
He nearly ignored it.
Sarah watched him answer.
“Daniel,” Eleanor said, sounding wounded. “You need to come home before this gets out of control.”
“My wife is in a hospital because of you.”
“That woman slipped.”
“Arthur saw you.”
“Arthur is old. He’s confused.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn everyone else into the problem.”
Eleanor’s voice cooled.
“You have no idea what Sarah has been doing behind your back.”
Daniel looked at his wife.
“What are you talking about?”
Eleanor paused.
Then she said, “Ask her why she met with your father’s old probate lawyer three days ago.”
Sarah’s eyes widened.
Daniel slowly lowered the phone.
“You met with Martin Hale?”
May you like
Sarah said nothing.
And for the first time since the fall, Daniel saw fear in her face that had nothing to do with Eleanor.
