Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN OUTSIDE
Sarah did not open the door.
She called 911.
Victoria remained motionless in the hallway while Sarah spoke to the dispatcher.
When officers arrived, Victoria calmly handed them identification and claimed she was conducting a welfare check.
“She is the wife of a missing employee,” Victoria said. “I received information that he may have contacted her.”
Sarah stood inside the doorway with the chain lock fastened.
“She has the package that came to my daughter.”
Victoria looked at the cardboard box in her hand.
“I found it downstairs beside the mailboxes.”
“That is not true.”
“Then perhaps your building has cameras.”
It did.
The hallway camera showed Victoria entering the building carrying the box.
She had possessed it before she arrived.
Police questioned her.
Victoria said a private investigator located the package through a shipping number connected to Harrison.
She claimed she came because she feared Sarah and Chloe were in danger.
The officers could not arrest her for knocking on a door.
They told her to leave.
Victoria looked at Sarah before stepping into the elevator.
“Do not connect that drive to the internet.”
Sarah’s blood went cold.
She had never mentioned a drive.
After the police left, Sarah packed a bag.
She called her older sister, Megan, who lived twenty minutes away.
Megan answered on the first ring.
“Sarah?”
“I need you to come get Chloe.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“No. Explain now.”
Sarah looked at Chloe sitting on the couch with the doll.
“A woman came to the apartment.”
“What woman?”
“Victoria Vale.”
There was silence.
Then Megan said, “The billionaire’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I found something Harrison hid.”
Megan arrived fifteen minutes later.
She took Chloe to her house while Sarah remained behind to speak with Detective Noah Grant, the officer assigned to Harrison’s disappearance.
Grant had always seemed too tired to believe her.
Tonight he looked awake.
“You said Victoria knew about a USB?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
Sarah placed the drive on the table but did not hand it over.
“Harrison said not to trust anyone connected to Vale Meridian.”
“I’m not connected to the company.”
“You closed his case as voluntary.”
“I did not close it. His employer provided travel records showing he left the state.”
“Were they real?”
Grant paused.
“We verified a plane ticket.”
“A ticket is not proof he boarded.”
“No.”
“Did you verify security footage?”
“The airport camera system had a technical failure in that terminal.”
Sarah laughed once.
It sounded bitter.
“So a man disappears from a billionaire’s company, the cameras fail, and the billionaire’s wife appears at my door holding a package she should not know exists.”
Grant leaned forward.
“You are right to be suspicious.”
It was the first time he had said anything like that.
Sarah gave him a copy of the video but kept the original drive.
Grant objected.
She refused.
The next morning, forensic technician Leah Coleman examined the USB in an offline lab.
The drive contained damaged partitions.
Most files appeared deleted.
The short video was only a fragment.
Leah recovered metadata showing it had been created twelve days after Harrison officially disappeared.
That meant he had been alive after the date on the plane ticket.
More importantly, the device had been encrypted using a custom system tied to Vale Meridian’s internal security architecture.
Harrison had not simply copied company files.
He had built a trap.
When the drive was opened on an internet-connected computer, it attempted to contact three remote servers.
Victoria’s warning had been accurate.
Someone was waiting for the signal.
The apartment laptop had connected for four seconds before Sarah removed the drive.
Long enough to reveal their location.
That was how Victoria found them.
But the server logs showed another connection too.
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A second party had seen the signal.
Someone besides Victoria was now looking for Sarah.
