Chapter 3 - The Missing Phone.
Detective Reyes read the anonymous message twice before asking Lucas whether he recognized the number.
He did not.
A preliminary lookup showed a prepaid line with no subscriber name attached.
Reyes told Lucas not to answer.
Then she placed his phone into a protective evidence bag long enough to copy the message metadata.
"This changes the situation," she said.
Lucas glanced through the room window at Victoria.
"How?"
"It suggests someone besides your sister may care about what was recorded."
The thought was worse than the idea of Amber acting alone.
Lucas spent the night in a chair beside Victoria's bed while nurses checked monitors and adjusted medication.
At 2:13 in the morning, Victoria woke from a restless sleep and asked whether Amber had been arrested.
Lucas said she was still being questioned.
He did not tell Victoria that Amber's attorney had already called the detective twice.
He did not tell her about the anonymous threat either.
Victoria watched his face.
"What are you hiding?"
Lucas looked down at their joined hands.
"Nothing that matters more than you resting."
Victoria gave him a tired, humorless smile.
"That means something is wrong."
Lucas told her about the text.
Her fingers tightened around his.
"Who would send that?"
"I don't know."
They both knew the question had more frightening answers than comforting ones.
By morning, Amber had been released pending further investigation because the prosecutor wanted complete medical reports and witness statements before final charging decisions.
A temporary no-contact order prohibited her from approaching Victoria.
Lucas learned about the release from his mother, Eleanor, who called before sunrise.
"This has gone too far," Eleanor said without greeting him.
Lucas walked into the empty corridor so Victoria would not hear.
"Amber kicked my pregnant wife."
"Amber says Victoria attacked her first."
"Amber lies when the truth becomes inconvenient."
There was a pause.
Eleanor lowered her voice.
"Families survive by handling things privately."
Lucas felt anger rise again, but this time he kept it under control.
"This is not a disagreement over Christmas dinner."
"Your sister could lose her career."
"Victoria could have lost our child."
Eleanor said nothing for several seconds.
When she spoke again, her tone was colder.
"Ask Victoria about the money."
Lucas ended the call.
The phrase was too similar to Amber's message to be coincidence.
He told Reyes immediately.
She asked whether Eleanor could have known about the transfer independently.
Lucas said his mother managed parts of the family business and knew more about everyone's finances than she admitted.
That afternoon, Lucas was allowed to return home briefly to collect clothes and documents.
A patrol officer met him there because the house was still considered relevant to the investigation.
The living room looked almost normal from the doorway.
That was the most disturbing part.
The carpet had been cleaned only where paramedics had worked.
A throw pillow lay beneath the coffee table.
Amber's overturned glass still sat on the floor near the sofa.
Lucas walked to the fireplace ledge.
No phone.
He crouched and examined the ash inside the fireplace even though no fire had been lit that day.
Fresh gray powder coated the older blackened wood.
Something metallic reflected near the grate.
Lucas called the officer over rather than touching it.
The officer used gloves and tongs to lift a thin warped rectangle from the ash.
It was the metal frame of a phone case.
Lucas recognized the silver corner where Victoria had dropped it months earlier.
His stomach tightened.
"That's hers."
More pieces appeared beneath the ash.
A cracked camera lens.
A melted button.
Part of a black protective shell.
Someone had tried to burn the device.
The officer immediately called Reyes.
Crime-scene technicians arrived within an hour and photographed the fireplace before removing every fragment.
Lucas stood in the kitchen while they worked.
He kept seeing the blackened pieces and imagining the recording disappearing with them.
Reyes arrived and asked whether anyone had access to the house after the ambulance left.
The initial scene log showed two officers, one paramedic returning for equipment, Amber before her removal, and Lucas for less than five minutes.
Amber had been left alone near the living room doorway for approximately forty seconds while an officer spoke to dispatch.
"Forty seconds is enough," Lucas said.
"Maybe," Reyes replied.
She refused to settle on an answer before the evidence did.
One technician found an unburned memory component among the fragments.
There was no guarantee data could be recovered, but it was something.
Then Reyes pointed toward the mantel.
A small security camera sat near a framed family photograph.
Lucas stared at it.
"That hasn't worked in months."
"Are you sure?"
He opened the home-security app on his tablet.
The camera status displayed offline.
The last synchronization date was three weeks earlier.
Reyes asked for the central security hub.
Lucas led her to the utility closet.
The shelf was empty.
Only two disconnected cables remained.
The hub had been removed.
Lucas felt the shape of the day changing again.
A destroyed phone could be panic.
A missing security hub looked like intent.
Reyes requested the security company's access logs.
A technician from the company called back before Lucas returned to the hospital.
The system had been remotely accessed at 11:42 that morning.
The login came from an authorized administrator account.
Lucas knew the account name before Reyes read it aloud.
May you like
It belonged to his father.
Robert Hale.
