Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Study
Sarah slipped the small silver drive deep into her apron pocket, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She hurried Julian upstairs to his bedroom, gently setting him on his four-poster bed and placing an ice pack over his swollen shoulder.
""She pushed me, Sarah,"" Julian whispered, clutching his plush bear to his chest. ""I saw her open Daddy’s safe when she thought everyone was asleep. She had papers with Mommy’s name on them. When she saw me standing by the railing, she ran at me and gave me a shove.""
Sarah’s blood ran cold. Julian’s mother, Clara Vance, had passed away eighteen months ago under tragic circumstances—a drowning accident at the family’s private lake retreat. Eleanor had moved in three months later, transforming the warm home into a cold monument to her own vanity.
""Julian, you must be very quiet about this,"" Sarah instructed, kneeling by the bed and brushing the tousled blond hair from his damp forehead. ""Don't say another word until Dr. Henderson gets here, okay? Trust me. I won't let her hurt you.""
Leaving the boy with Mrs. Higgins, the elderly cook whose loyalty to Clara had never wavered, Sarah slipped quietly down the service staircase. The house was unnervingly silent, save for the muffled, heated voices coming from behind the heavy mahogany doors of Arthur’s first-floor library.
Sarah crept along the velvet-papered hallway, pressing her back against the wall next to the carved doorway.
""...I told you, Arthur, the boy is imagining things!"" Eleanor’s voice was sharp, shedding all pretense of gentleness. ""He resents me because I'm not Clara. He wants to drive a wedge between us! If you side with a maid over your wife, what does that say about our marriage?""
""It’s not just about the maid, Eleanor,"" Arthur’s deep voice replied, laden with a heavy fatigue. ""Julian was terrified of you. He flinched when you reached for him. And why would the internal router log an override from your personal IP address right when the feed cut?""
Sarah held her breath. Arthur hadn't been fooled entirely after all.
""My tablet was on the coffee table; anyone could have accessed the network app!"" Eleanor shot back defensively. ""Are you accusing me? After everything I sacrificed to take care of you after Clara’s accident? You ungrateful—""
""Enough!"" Arthur slammed a hand on his desk. ""I want the external cloud backup reviewed by the cybersecurity team tonight. If the drive is wiped, we will recover it.""
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Sarah touched the thumb drive inside her pocket. The external drive wasn't wiped in the cloud; Eleanor had physically extracted the local buffer cache onto this very stick before the cloud sync could overwrite it.
Suddenly, the library door clicked, the brass handle turning sharply. Sarah gasped, having no time to retreat down the long corridor before the door swung open.
