Chapter 2 - The Missing Footage
Daniel parked two houses away from his parents’ home.
He called me before getting out.
“The lights are off.”
“They know you’re there.”
“I know.”
“Come back.”
“No.”
His answer came too fast.
I heard a car door close.
“Daniel.”
“I’ll call you in ten minutes.”
The line went dead.
He entered through the side gate using the old keypad code.
The courtyard was empty.
The broken coffee cup was gone.
So were Sofia’s wet footprints.
Someone had washed the concrete.
Inside the house, every light had been turned off except the one above the stove.
Daniel moved quietly through the kitchen.
He opened the security cabinet beneath the stairs and connected his laptop to the recording system.
The screen flickered.
Camera one.
Front entrance.
Camera two.
Hallway.
Camera three.
Courtyard.
“No,” Daniel whispered.
The courtyard recording skipped from 3:11 p.m. to 4:02 p.m.
The attack had happened around 3:30.
Forty-nine minutes were missing.
He checked the deletion log.
Someone had entered the system at 4:18.
User: ADMIN-R.
His father’s account.
Daniel took a picture of the screen.
Then he heard a floorboard creak above him.
“Dad?”
No answer.
Daniel turned.
Ricardo stood at the bottom of the stairs holding a baseball bat.
“You broke into my house.”
“I used my code.”
“You’re not welcome here.”
Daniel looked at the bat.
“Where’s the footage?”
Ricardo rested the bat against his shoulder.
“Go home.”
“My daughter is in the hospital.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Daniel stared at him.
Ricardo shrugged.
“Camila never watches the girl properly.”
Daniel took one step forward.
“Mariela threw boiling coffee at her.”
“You weren’t there.”
“The camera was.”
“The camera malfunctioned.”
“You deleted forty-nine minutes.”
Ricardo’s mouth tightened.
“Get out.”
Daniel held up his phone.
“I already photographed the system log.”
For the first time, Ricardo looked uncertain.
It lasted less than a second.
Then he swung the bat.
Daniel raised his arm.
Wood cracked against bone.
He fell into the wall.
The laptop hit the tile floor.
Ricardo lifted the bat again.
A woman screamed from the stairs.
Teresa stood there in her robe.
“Stop!”
Ricardo froze.
Not because his wife had ordered him to.
Because someone else had stepped through the front door.
Mariela.
She looked at Daniel bleeding on the floor.
Then she looked at the shattered laptop.
“You should’ve stayed at the hospital,” she said.
Daniel struggled to his feet.
“You burned my daughter.”
Mariela folded her arms.
“She got in the way.”
Daniel lunged toward her.
Ricardo raised the bat again.
Teresa stepped between them.
“Enough.”
Her voice shook.
“Everyone needs to calm down.”
Daniel laughed once.
A strange, ugly sound.
“Your granddaughter is bandaged from her face to her chest, and you want us to calm down?”
Teresa looked at the floor.
“It was an accident.”
“No,” Mariela said.
Everyone turned toward her.
She tilted her head.
“It wasn’t.”
The room went still.
Daniel stared at his sister.
“What did you say?”
Mariela looked straight at him.
“She touched my son’s things after I told her not to.”
“Mariela,” Teresa whispered.
“I wanted her to remember.”
Daniel’s face drained of color.
Then a small electronic beep sounded from beneath the broken laptop.
The backup drive was still running.
May you like
And its green light was blinking.
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