Chapter 3 - The Missing Six Minutes
Claire returned before sunrise.
She had spent the night comparing the recording against original server logs supplied by a former employee of Hayes Development.
The timestamps matched 2019.
The email attributed to Samuel did not.
“It wasn't sent to my father,” she explained.
“It was sent from an account someone maintained after he died.”
That distinction gave us a direction, but no comfort.
I called the attorney who had administered my grandfather's trust, Helen Ward.
She was sixty-three, exceptionally precise, and the only person I knew who could make a simple greeting sound like sworn testimony.
“Amelia, you should have called me before you went to court alone.”
“I thought the certificate was enough.”
“It was enough to raise the issue.”
She paused.
“It isn't enough to survive what they'll do next.”
Helen agreed to represent me and arranged an independent forensic review of the footage.
By noon, the technician identified a six-minute gap in the original security export.
It had been deleted before the file was copied, not edited afterward.
Whoever sent the recording wanted us to hear the forgery discussion.
They did not want us to hear what followed.
Helen prepared a preservation demand for the office server, backup drives, and access logs.
As we left her office, I noticed a black sedan parked across the street.
The driver lowered his phone when I looked at him.
I recognized the license plate from outside my farmhouse the previous night.
Helen photographed it and called an investigator she trusted.
“Don't confront anyone,” she said.
I had survived a roadside blast, but being followed through my own hometown produced a different kind of fear.
It meant the threat could reach my front porch.
That afternoon, my mother called from an unfamiliar number.
“Amelia, we need to talk as a family.”
“We can communicate through counsel.”
“Your father has been under terrible pressure.”
“He accused me of a felony in open court.”
“You know how dramatic he becomes when frightened.”
The old pattern returned immediately.
She would minimize what he did.
I would be asked to make it easier for him.
And if I resisted, she would call me ungrateful.
“Why did Nathan Price have Samuel's seal?” I asked.
Her silence was long enough to count.
“Stay away from Nathan,” she said.
Then the line went dead.
An hour later, an investigator found the sedan registered to a private surveillance company hired through a Hayes Development subsidiary.
The company claimed it had been conducting lawful background research for civil litigation.
Helen warned me that the explanation might be technically plausible.
I wondered whether my parents had learned anything about shame in their twelve years without me.
That evening, Claire texted a photograph of a storage-unit receipt discovered among her father's personal papers.
Unit 314.
Monthly payments had continued until last week.
The payer listed on the receipt was the Samuel Grant Estate.
Claire had never authorized it.
We drove there together.
The manager checked the rental agreement and frowned.
“Someone already accessed that unit today.”
“Who?” I asked.
He turned the sign-in sheet toward us.
There, in a hurried hand, was my father's name.
Richard Hayes.
Beneath the signature, someone had written one more line.
May you like
TELL AMELIA THE SIX MINUTES WERE ABOUT HER.
