Chapter 3 - THE LOGIN AT 2:14 A.M.
A Windows computer in another part of the county had accessed my account at 2:14 a.m.
I had been asleep in a hospital recliner beside Lily at 2:14 a.m.
"Do you recognize the location?" Brooks asked.
The map showed a neighborhood on the west side.
I did.
My parents' house was there.
My mouth went dry.
I changed the password immediately.
Then I opened the folder where I kept Lily's discharge documents.
The emails from Dr. Shah were there.
So were lab schedules, medication lists, visitor restrictions, and her old room number.
My mother had not guessed anything.
She had been reading my email.
I checked the account recovery settings.
My phone number was listed.
My backup email was listed.
And beneath them was a recovery phone number ending in 4421.
I stared at it.
"Is that yours?" Brooks asked.
"No."
I knew whose it was.
My father's.
I had used his number as a backup when I first created the account in college.
I had forgotten it was still there.
Brooks nodded slowly.
"Change that too."
I removed it.
Then I checked deleted messages.
There was a security warning from three weeks ago confirming a login using a recovery code.
I had never seen it because someone had deleted it.
My phone began vibrating on the table.
MOM.
I let it ring.
A second later, a text appeared.
You have always been paranoid, Emily.
Another came before I could respond.
Now you are dragging strangers into family business because you need attention.
Then a third.
If Lily is frightened, that is because of you.
I took screenshots.
Sheriff Brooks watched without speaking.
Mom sent a fourth message.
Open the gate tomorrow and this all goes away.
I read it twice.
"She wants access tomorrow?"
Brooks leaned closer.
I typed one question.
Why tomorrow?
The typing bubble appeared immediately.
Then disappeared.
Appeared again.
Disappeared.
Finally, a message came through.
Because your father and I need to collect a few personal items you stole from us.
I looked toward the barn.
Everything they owned had been moved to storage.
I had photographed every item before it left.
"There is nothing of theirs here," I said.
Brooks's eyes went to the house.
"Maybe there is something they think is theirs."
That thought stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon.
At four, Rebecca left.
At five, Brooks drove away after giving me his direct department number.
At six, I heated soup for Lily and sat with her at opposite ends of the sunroom, separated by the precautions her doctors required.
She was quiet.
Too quiet.
"You can ask me anything."
She stirred her soup.
"Is Grandma going to get you arrested?"
My throat tightened.
"No."
"She told Aunt Caroline you're dangerous."
I set down my spoon.
"How do you know?"
Lily lifted her tablet.
"Aunt Caroline texted me."
I held out my hand.
Lily gave me the tablet.
The message was from Caroline, but it did not sound like Caroline.
Your mom is under a lot of stress and may not be thinking clearly. If you ever feel unsafe, Grandma says you can call her and she will come get you.
I felt heat spread through my chest.
"Did you answer?"
"No."
"Good."
I blocked the number temporarily and told Lily why.
She nodded, but her eyes filled.
"I don't want everyone fighting because I'm sick."
I crossed the room before I remembered I could not casually wrap my arms around her without washing again and changing the outer layer I had worn outside.
That tiny hesitation nearly destroyed me.
"Nobody is fighting because you're sick."
I kept my voice steady.
"They are fighting because I said no, and they don't know what to do with a no."
Lily looked at me for a long moment.
"Grandma hates no."
"Yes."
"So does Grandpa."
"Yes."
She looked back at her soup.
"Then maybe they need to hear it more often."
I laughed once, quietly.
"Maybe they do."
That night, after Lily fell asleep, I walked through the farmhouse with every exterior light on.
I checked windows.
I checked locks.
I checked cameras.
At 11:47 p.m., motion triggered the camera in the barn.
My heart stopped.
I opened the live feed.
The barn was dark except for the infrared glow.
A figure moved between the stalls.
Someone was already inside.
I called Sheriff Brooks with shaking fingers.
Then I enlarged the image.
The person turned toward the camera.
It was my brother Mark.
And he was carrying my grandmother's old brass key ring.
I did not go outside.
Every instinct in me wanted to run to the barn and drag Mark out by the collar.
Instead, I locked the mudroom door, checked the upstairs monitor, and stayed beside the phone.
Lily was still asleep.
That mattered more than whatever my brother thought he was doing.
Sheriff Brooks answered on the second ring.
"Where are you?"
"Inside the house."
"Stay there."
"Mark is in the barn."
"Do not confront him."
"He has Grandma's keys."
There was a short pause.
"I'm four minutes away."
The camera feed showed Mark crossing toward the rear wall of the barn.
He was wearing jeans, work boots, and a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.
He moved like someone who knew exactly where he was going.
That was what frightened me.
If he had come to steal something random, he would have searched.
He did not search.
He went directly to the old tack room.
Grandma June had used that room for bills, seed catalogs, veterinary records, and handwritten notes that seemed meaningless until you needed one.
After I bought the farm, I converted most of it into storage.
I had not touched the built-in desk against the far wall.
Mark unlocked the tack room with one of the brass keys.
I stared at the screen.
I had changed the exterior barn lock on Friday.
The door he had entered through was not the main door.
It was the old livestock passage at the rear, a warped wooden door I had secured from inside with a sliding bolt.
Or thought I had.
Mark must have opened it earlier.
Before I changed the locks.
The realization made my skin crawl.
He had prepared access in advance.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Sheriff Brooks.
Two minutes.
On the camera, Mark knelt beside the built-in desk.
He did not open the drawers.
He reached underneath them.
Then the feed froze.
My stomach dropped.
The timestamp stopped moving.
I refreshed the app.
CAMERA OFFLINE.
The barn camera had lost power.
I called Brooks again.
"He killed the camera."
"I'm at the road."
I moved to the living-room window and saw the patrol SUV approaching without lights.
Brooks stopped near the gate, got out, and walked the rest of the distance.
A second deputy arrived from the opposite direction.
They entered the barn through the side door.
For almost five minutes, nothing happened.
Then Mark emerged with his hands visible.
He looked furious.
He was not in handcuffs.
That somehow made me angrier.
Brooks spoke to him beside the patrol SUV while the deputy returned to the barn.
I stayed inside until Brooks called me.
"Your brother says you gave him permission to retrieve a family document."
"I did not."
"I figured."
"Why isn't he in cuffs?"
"Because I am still establishing how he entered and what he took."
"He broke into my barn."
"He claims the rear passage was unlocked."
"It was bolted from inside."
"That's useful."
I looked toward Mark.
He stared back at the house as if I were the criminal.
"What was he looking for?"
Brooks lowered his voice.
"He says an envelope your grandmother kept in the tack desk."
"What envelope?"
"He won't say."
"Then arrest him."
"Emily, I understand why you're angry."
"No, you understand that he entered my property after a trespass notice and shut off a camera."
Brooks did not react to my tone.
"And I am documenting all of that."
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
"What did he take?"
"Nothing that we found on him."
That answer did not calm me.
It made everything worse.
Mark had not come for an object he expected to carry out in plain sight.
He had come to check whether something was still there.
Brooks asked if I could meet them outside after changing into clean outdoor clothing.
I checked Lily first.
Still asleep.
Then I went to the front steps.
Mark stood beyond the walkway with the deputy between us.
"What were you doing in my barn?"
He looked exhausted rather than guilty.
"Mom said you took something that belongs to Dad."
"Mom says a lot of things."
"She said it was in Grandma's desk."
"What?"
"I don't know."
"You broke into my barn for something you cannot even name?"
"I didn't break in."
"You disabled my camera."
He looked away.
"The plug was loose."
I laughed.
It came out sharper than I intended.
"You accidentally loosened the plug after accidentally entering through a rear door that was bolted from the inside?"
Mark's jaw tightened.
"I opened that door yesterday."
The deputy beside him went still.
So did I.
"What?"
Mark realized too late what he had admitted.
Brooks stepped closer.
"Yesterday when?"
"Afternoon."
"Before the locks were changed?"
Mark looked at me.
"Mom asked me to get the old serving trays."
I remembered seeing nothing unusual on the barn camera Friday afternoon.
Then I remembered why.
The camera had been offline for eighteen minutes at 3:06 p.m.
I had assumed the Wi-Fi bridge had reset.
"You came onto my property yesterday without telling me."
"You've never cared before."
"Yesterday was not before."
"I didn't know you were turning the place into a fortress."
"Lily had been home ten days. You knew exactly why I was limiting visitors."
His face changed when I said her name.
For the first time, guilt appeared.
"I wasn't near the house."
"That is not the point."
"I sanitized."
"That is not the point either."
I heard my own voice shaking.
"You helped them prepare to invade the property after I said no."
Mark looked at the ground.
"I thought Mom was being dramatic."
"She told me to lock Lily upstairs."
He looked up.
"She didn't tell me that."
"Of course she didn't."
I pulled out my phone and played the voicemail again.
Mark listened.
May you like
His face slowly drained of color.
