Chapter 2 - The Missing Seven Minutes
Vincent reached for Dominic’s phone.
Dominic pulled it back.
“Trace the number without touching this.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded.
Mason started a network capture while Dominic forwarded the image through an isolated terminal.
Clare stood beside the wall with Ellie against her leg.
The child was no longer playing.
She watched every adult face in the room.
That made Dominic more uneasy than if she had cried.
“Mason,” Dominic said. “Rebuild the missing seven minutes from secondary systems.”
“We don’t have secondary video in rehab.”
“We have motion sensors.”
“Yes.”
“Thermostats.”
“Yes.”
“Door pressure.”
Mason looked at him.
“Smart lighting.”
“Then we have seven minutes.”
Vincent almost smiled.
Almost.
Mason opened three diagnostic panels.
The rehab room registered movement at 11:43.
Then again at 11:45.
Then a temperature change at 11:46, as if an exterior hallway door had opened.
The smart lights dimmed at 11:47.
“Why would they dim?” Clare asked.
“Manual scene control,” Mason said.
“Can the cameras be disabled from the wall panel?”
“No.”
Dominic looked at the data.
“But the person who cloned my credential could walk through every interior security door.”
Vincent tapped one row.
“And access the local network port in the physical-therapy cabinet.”
Mason turned.
The cabinet appeared on another camera angle.
Ellie pointed.
“That one clicks bad.”
Clare blinked. “What?”
Ellie walked to the screen and touched the image.
“The tall door.”
Dominic looked at Vincent.
“Take us there.”
The rehab wing smelled faintly of disinfectant and eucalyptus oil.
Dominic hated both scents now.
They had become the smell of people telling him pain was normal.
The tall equipment cabinet stood beside a row of resistance bands.
Vincent drew a compact pistol before opening the room.
Clare stopped cold.
“Is that necessary?”
“No,” Vincent said.
He opened the door anyway.
The room was empty.
Dominic moved to the cabinet.
The metal latch looked ordinary.
Ellie tugged on Clare’s sleeve.
“Can I?”
Clare started to say no.
Dominic nodded.
Ellie pressed the latch.
Click.
Click.
A pause.
Click.
Her face tightened.
“Bad.”
Vincent crouched beside her.
“Why?”
She frowned like the answer was obvious.
“Because it says locked when it isn’t.”
Dominic looked at the cabinet.
Vincent pulled once.
The door opened.
Inside, behind coils of therapy tubing, a network jack blinked green.
A short cable hung loose.
Mason had followed them with a tablet.
He plugged in.
“Port was active yesterday.”
“What time?”
His fingers moved.
“Eleven forty-two to eleven forty-nine.”
Seven minutes.
Clare rubbed both hands over her upper arms.
“Someone stood right here.”
Dominic leaned against the treatment table.
“And removed themselves from the cameras.”
Mercer appeared in the doorway.
Vincent raised the pistol halfway.
The doctor stopped.
“For God’s sake.”
“Good rule tonight,” Vincent said.
Mercer held up both hands.
“I found something.”
Dominic stared at him.
“That phrase has not improved my evening.”
Mercer placed a tablet on the treatment table.
Dominic’s rehabilitation chart filled the screen.
Pressure settings.
Range-of-motion measurements.
Medication notes.
Daily pain scores.
Mercer scrolled.
“These three entries were changed.”
“By whom?”
“The chart says me.”
Vincent’s expression went flat.
“Were they?”
“No.”
Mercer tapped a brace-setting note.
“It says I instructed the staff to increase compression on the lower strap because of instability.”
“Did you?” Dominic asked.
“No.”
“Could increasing compression make the reversed plate worse?”
Mercer looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
“Then someone didn’t just reverse it.”
Dominic’s mouth went dry.
“They built a medical explanation around the pain.”
Mercer nodded.
Another vibration came from Dominic’s phone.
This time it was Arthur.
DOMINIC, OPEN THE DOOR. WE NEED TO TALK BEFORE THIS BECOMES IRREVERSIBLE.
Dominic showed Vincent.
Vincent snorted.
“Very considerate.”
Clare was staring at Mercer’s tablet.
“What’s that name?”
She pointed near the bottom.
Angela Pierce.
Mercer nodded.
“Senior rehabilitation technician.”
“She was here yesterday.”
Mercer frowned. “You saw her?”
“She asked me for extra bath sheets. Said Mr. Vale had spilled water during therapy.”
Dominic looked at Mercer.
“I didn’t have therapy yesterday.”
The doctor’s face drained.
Vincent was already moving.
“Where does Angela live?”
Mercer gave him the address.
“Don’t send anyone yet,” Dominic said.
Vincent stopped.
“Why?”
“Because if she thinks we know, she runs. If whoever used her thinks we know, she disappears.”
Clare flinched at the word.
Dominic noticed.
“Sorry.”
She pressed her lips together.
“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t let anyone near my daughter.”
Vincent looked at her.
“No one will.”
She didn’t seem reassured.
Mason called from the cabinet.
“I found a residual cache.”
They crowded around the tablet.
The camera stream had been blanked, but the network switch had stored thumbnail checks every thirty seconds for health monitoring.
Not video.
Still images.
Broken.
Half corrupted.
But enough.
11:43:30.
Empty room.
11:44:00.
A blurred shoulder.
11:44:30.
A man in a dark coat beside the therapy table.
11:45:00.
The same man bending toward Dominic’s brace.
11:45:30.
His face turned halfway toward the camera.
Clare whispered, “That isn’t Arthur.”
Dominic knew the profile.
Long nose.
Close-cropped gray hair.
Thin silver glasses.
Rafe Calder.
General counsel to Vale Holdings for nineteen years.
The man who had drafted Dominic’s first acquisition agreement when Dominic was twenty-four.
The man who had written the temporary-authority papers waiting in the conference room.
Vincent’s hand tightened on the tablet.
“Rafe told me he was at the federal courthouse yesterday.”
Dominic stared at the image.
“He was.”
Vincent looked at him.
“I spoke to him there at noon.”
Mason pulled up the building-entry database for the courthouse.
Rafe Calder badged in at 10:12 a.m.
Badged out at 12:38 p.m.
Traffic cameras placed his car downtown the entire time.
Dominic looked back at the thumbnail.
Same coat.
Same glasses.
Same face.
Impossible.
Unless the timestamp was false.
Or the image was planted.
Or somebody wanted them to spend the night hunting a man who could prove he had been somewhere else.
Ellie tugged Dominic’s sleeve.
He looked down.
She pointed at the blurry image.
“That man has Daddy’s clicker.”
Clare went still.
“What did you say?”
Ellie tapped the small black object clipped to Rafe’s belt.
“Daddy had one.”
Clare stared at the screen.
“No, sweetheart. Your father didn’t work here.”
“At the big water place.”
Clare’s breath caught.
Dominic turned toward her.
“What big water place?”
Her eyes stayed on the object in the image.
“Pier Seventeen.”
The name landed inside Dominic like another impact.
Owen Rowan.
Clare’s late husband.
A maintenance engineer killed two years earlier in what the company report called an industrial accident.
Dominic had signed the settlement.
He remembered the file only because the widow had refused the first offer.
Clare finally looked at him.
“My husband carried that exact diagnostic remote.”
Vincent asked, “What did it control?”
“Safety locks. Cargo gates. Crane housings. Anything with a bypass circuit.”
Ellie clicked her toy.
Click.
Click.
Pause.
Click.
Clare’s face lost all color.
“Oh my God.”
Dominic felt the room narrow.
“What?”
She looked at the little wooden toy.
“Owen used to say that.”
“Say what?”
Clare swallowed.
“Two clicks means the safety caught.”
Her fingers began to shake.
“Three means somebody bypassed it.”
Mason’s tablet chimed.
A new recovery result appeared from the corrupted cache.
One frame.
11:47:02.
Rafe’s image was gone.
A different person stood beside the cabinet.
Only the hand was visible.
On one finger was Dominic’s black signet ring.
Dominic looked down at his own hand.
The ring was there.
It had never left him.
Vincent whispered, “They didn’t just clone your credential.”
Dominic stared at the impossible hand on the screen.
May you like
“They’re building me into the footage.”
