Chapter 2 - THE MISSING SEVENTEEN MINUTES“THE FOOTAGE IS GONE.”
The security technician stared at the monitor in the mansion office, his face tightening as the father stood behind him. Video existed from the entire morning—except for seventeen minutes surrounding the staircase incident. The deletion had happened less than five minutes before everyone entered the office.
“That’s impossible,” the father said.
“No,” the technician replied. “It’s deliberate.”
The red-haired woman folded her arms. “There. You see? There’s no evidence.”
But the technician slowly turned toward her.
“I didn’t say there was no evidence. I said someone deleted the video.”
He opened the system log. The deletion required an administrator code known only to three people: the father, the security manager—and the father’s late wife, whose account supposedly had been deactivated two years earlier.
The father stared at the screen.
His late wife’s username had accessed the system that morning.
A chill moved through him.
“That account doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Apparently,” the technician said, “someone made sure it did.”
Behind them, the little boy suddenly pulled away from the dark-haired woman and walked toward a cabinet. He crouched, reached behind it, and produced a small black phone.
The father recognized it immediately.
It had belonged to his late wife.
“Where did you find that?”
The boy’s answer changed everything.
“She gave it to me.”
Everyone froze.
“Who gave it to you?”
The child slowly pointed toward the woman in green.
But before anyone could speak, the phone screen illuminated by itself.
May you like
A message appeared.
DON’T OPEN THE BASEMENT DOOR.
