Chapter 8 - WHAT MY HUSBAND WAS WATCHING
We found the second camera at my house the next morning.
Sarah obtained a warrant through a state judge before dawn.
Daniel still hadn’t returned.
The camera was hidden inside a smoke detector facing our bedroom.
I stared at it.
“How long?”
A forensic technician checked the device.
“At least six months.”
Six months.
Daniel had been watching me.
Recording me.
Sleeping beside me afterward.
“Why?”
Sarah opened a recovered cloud account connected to the camera.
The answer appeared quickly.
Dozens of clips.
Most showed nothing important.
Me sleeping.
Getting dressed.
Reading.
Crying after Mom died.
Then we found the ones Daniel had saved.
Every time I opened Mom’s old boxes.
Every time I examined paperwork.
Every time I spoke to Mark privately.
Daniel had marked the clips with dates.
“He was looking for something,” Sarah said.
“The password.”
Mark nodded.
“Your mother’s encrypted files.”
Then a technician found an audio clip.
Daniel and Vanessa.
Recorded accidentally while the camera was active.
Vanessa’s voice:
“You’re really going through with this?”
Daniel:
“Dad says we don’t have a choice.”
“What if Emma finds out?”
“She won’t.”
“And Lily?”
Long silence.
Then Daniel said:
“Lily is leverage.”
My vision blurred.
Vanessa laughed nervously.
“She’s your daughter.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it.”
Daniel’s answer came quietly.
“I’m trying to keep her alive.”
I stopped breathing.
Sarah replayed it.
“I’m trying to keep her alive.”
Mark looked at me.
“So Daniel believes Robert might hurt Lily.”
“Or he wants us to believe that.”
Another recovered video appeared.
Daniel sitting alone on the edge of our bed.
It had been recorded three nights before Mom died.
He held his phone.
He was crying.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
A man answered through the speaker.
Robert.
“You don’t have to like it.”
“She trusts me.”
“That was the point.”
“What if Emma learns why I married her?”
I gripped the desk.
The room tilted.
Robert said, “Then you make sure she doesn’t live long enough to tell anyone.”
The recording ended.
No one spoke.
I felt as if my entire marriage had been erased.
Daniel hadn’t fallen in love with me.
He had been assigned to me.
Five years.
A wedding.
A child.
All of it started as surveillance.
Then Lily walked toward the laptop.
She pointed to a frozen frame from the video.
“Mommy.”
“What?”
“That man.”
Robert’s face was reflected faintly in a mirror during one of Daniel’s video calls.
Lily pointed again.
“He came to Grandma’s hospital.”
My blood went cold.
“When?”
“The night Grandma died.”
I crouched.
“You saw him?”
Lily nodded.
“He told Grandma he was sorry.”
My mouth went dry.
“What else?”
Lily whispered, “Grandma said…”
She closed her eyes, trying to remember.
“Rachel wasn’t the only girl.”
Then my phone rang.
It was Vanessa.
I answered.
She was sobbing.
“Emma…”
“What?”
“You need to come get Chloe.”
“Why?”
“Because my father just found out I saved another copy of the livestream.”
A crash exploded through the phone.
Vanessa screamed.
Then Robert’s voice came through clearly.
May you like
“Tell Emma if she wants the child alive…”
“…she’ll come to Willow Creek.”
