Chapter 12: Thirty Seconds
My father grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the car.
Detective Ortiz shouted for everyone to move.
We ran across the parking lot as the bomb unit responded.
Thirty seconds passed.
Then a minute.
Nothing happened.
There was no explosion.
The threat had been a distraction.
During the evacuation, someone entered the evidence room on the opposite side of the police building.
The intruder stole the original memory card containing Lily’s hospital recording.
Security cameras captured a maintenance worker leaving through the loading entrance.
The worker was later found unconscious inside a stairwell.
His uniform had been taken.
Claire had returned to New York.
She was not escaping.
She was destroying the case.
Without the original memory card, Adrian’s attorney could challenge the video as manipulated.
The online copy might not be enough.
Claire also deleted a backup from the police system.
She knew their procedures because she had worked with law enforcement for years.
Ortiz was furious.
My father was worse.
But I remembered something.
When we first watched the recording, Claire had examined the file metadata before disappearing.
She knew the original existed.
She also knew Lily’s tablet was in evidence.
That meant the tablet might contain another copy.
Police technicians searched it.
The video file had been deleted.
But Lily had enabled an automatic backup to her children’s learning account.
The account stored short recordings for thirty days.
Lily’s video had been created eighteen days earlier.
One day before the system would permanently erase it.
The backup was still there.
Claire had failed.
Ortiz sent officers to every airport, marina, train station, and property connected to her.
At 4:15 a.m., a patrol officer recognized Claire’s vehicle near St. Matthew’s Hospital.
She had returned to the place where Lily died.
I knew why before anyone told me.
Claire wanted the medication records.
She intended to destroy the physical server.
The police ordered me to remain outside.
I entered anyway.
The pediatric corridor was dark.
Claire stood near Lily’s former room, holding a gasoline container in one hand and a lighter in the other.
“You always were stubborn,” she said.
My father appeared behind me.
“Put it down, Claire.”
She smiled at him.
“For fifteen years, I made you richer.”
“You stole from me.”
“I made your lies legal.”
“You murdered my granddaughter.”
Her smile vanished.
“You put four hundred million dollars in a child’s name and expected no one to notice.”
“She was not a number.”
“To you, everyone is a number.”
Claire looked at me.
“Your father destroys people and calls it business. Adrian betrayed everyone and called it survival. Vanessa sold her body and called it love. But I am the monster because I understood the rules better than they did.”
“You killed a six-year-old girl.”
“I removed an obstacle.”
I heard officers moving quietly behind the doors.
Claire lifted the lighter.
“Stop,” I said.
She watched me.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“That you did it. That you ordered Vanessa to remove the inhalers. That you gave Lily the drug.”
My phone was recording inside my coat.
Claire seemed to realize it.
Then she laughed.
“You think a confession matters?”
“It matters to me.”
Her eyes became cold.
“Yes, Emma. I ordered it.”
My breath stopped.
Claire raised the lighter.
“And now I’m going to erase what remains.”
A voice came from Lily’s old room.
“You already failed.”
May you like
Adrian stepped into the corridor wearing prison transport restraints.
And Claire turned the lighter toward him.
