Chapter 4 - The Video Marcus Wanted
Vincent took Lily inside again before he touched the burner phone further.
This time he locked the sitting-room door behind them and pulled the curtains shut. He did not want Marcus, Cole, or Dean seeing even the light from the phone screen. Lily sat tucked against his side with the stuffed rabbit in her lap, staring at him with the wide, exhausted eyes of a child who had been frightened too often and for too long.
The burner had no passcode. Naomi must have known time would matter.
There were only three things on it: a gallery folder, a voice memo, and a saved map pin with no label.
The gallery folder contained a single video.
Vincent pressed play.
The footage was shaky, as if Naomi had recorded it in panic while hiding. It showed the courtyard garage from a side angle—Marcus pacing, Cole smoking, Dean unloading document boxes from the back of a truck. Then Marcus spoke, and Naomi’s camera tilted closer.
“Find the originals,” Marcus snapped. “If Naomi kept copies, they’re either in the garage or with the kid.”
“The trust papers?” Dean asked.
“All of it,” Marcus said. “The guardianship papers, the transfer authorizations, the insurance file. If Vincent gets those first, this whole thing dies.”
Naomi’s breathing went sharp behind the camera.
Then Marcus said the thing that made Vincent’s blood turn to ice.
“If the kid knows where her mother hid anything, use the cage again.”
The video ended abruptly.
For several seconds, Vincent didn’t move.
Lily looked up at him. “Grandpa?”
He swallowed hard and played the voice memo next.
Naomi’s voice came through, quiet but urgent.
“Dad, if you’re hearing this, Marcus found out I copied everything. Don’t confront him without proof. Don’t trust anything he says about me leaving Lily. Start with the hatch, then go to the storage unit. The key is with Bunny. If I don’t make it to you, there’s enough in that unit to prove he was using my marriage to get to Lily’s trust.”
The recording cut, then resumed with her voice thinner, more frightened.
“And Dad… if Lily says she saw the red light under the garage door, believe her.”
Vincent looked at Lily immediately.
She shrank a little into the couch. “I saw it,” she whispered. “At night. And I heard Mommy crying.”
The saved map pin on the phone suddenly made perfect sense.
It wasn’t to some random place.
May you like
It was to a storage facility ten miles away.
And if Naomi had risked everything to point him there, then whatever was inside mattered enough to get her hunted.
