Chapter 13 - Forty-Three Seconds
Daniel stared at the video frame as if he were watching a ghost walk into the room.
No one spoke.
On the screen, the timestamp read 10:28:03 p.m.
My father was on his knees in the hallway.
Marlene stood six feet away.
Dr. Hale held the empty glass.
Victor Sloane watched from beside the stairs.
Then Daniel entered the frame.
He looked younger.
He wore no jacket.
His tie was loose.
He stopped so abruptly that his entire body jerked.
"Robert?"
His recorded voice cracked through the lab speakers.
Daniel, standing beside me in real life, whispered the same word.
The man in the video rushed toward my father.
Marlene blocked him.
"Don't touch him."
Daniel shoved past her.
"Call an ambulance."
Hale said something too low to hear.
Daniel grabbed his phone.
Victor slapped it from his hand.
That was when the scene changed.
Daniel looked at all three of them.
He understood.
Maybe not everything.
But enough.
"What did you do?"
His voice on the recording was barely human.
Marlene answered first.
"He had a cardiac event."
Daniel stared at Hale.
"Then help him."
Hale did not move.
My father tried to lift his head.
His mouth formed a word.
I leaned closer to the screen.
"What is he saying?"
The forensic technician replayed three seconds and amplified the audio.
My father's voice emerged under the static.
"Clara."
My knees weakened.
Daniel in the video heard him too.
He knelt beside my father.
"She's safe."
Victor stepped closer.
"Daniel, think carefully."
"About what?"
"About Evelyn."
The Daniel beside me closed his eyes.
In the video, he froze.
Victor continued.
"Your sister forged documents."
"We have copies."
"We have bank records."
"We have her signature."
Daniel looked at Marlene.
"Call an ambulance."
Marlene's face was frighteningly calm.
"If we call now, Hale will say Robert collapsed from his heart condition."
"If you create a scene, Evelyn goes to prison."
Daniel stared at her.
"You're insane."
Victor spoke softly.
"No."
"We're practical."
Then my father collapsed fully onto the carpet.
Daniel grabbed him.
"Robert."
He shouted at Hale.
"Do something."
Hale finally moved.
But not toward the phone.
He crouched and checked my father's pulse.
"He's still alive."
Daniel's face twisted.
"Then call."
Hale looked at Marlene.
That look lasted less than a second.
It was enough.
Daniel lunged for the phone on the floor.
Victor caught his arm.
They struggled.
Daniel hit him.
Hard.
Victor fell into the wall.
Daniel grabbed the phone and dialed.
The camera had no audio from the call, but the lab recovered emergency dispatch records.
10:29:41.
Daniel called 911.
The official record I had always known said Marlene called at 10:36.
There had been an earlier call.
Someone buried it.
The video continued.
Daniel gave the address.
Then Hale ripped the phone away.
"What are you doing?"
Daniel shouted.
"Saving him."
"No, you're not."
Hale ended the call.
Daniel tried to redial.
Victor punched him in the stomach.
Marlene shouted.
The video became chaos.
Then Daniel stumbled out of frame.
Thirty seconds later, he returned with my father's house phone.
He dialed again.
This time no one stopped him.
Sirens were heard eleven minutes later.
My father was carried out alive.
I turned away from the screen.
For four years, I thought he had died at home.
Marlene told me he was gone before the ambulance arrived.
That was another lie.
"He died at the hospital?"
I asked.
Daniel nodded.
"Forty-seven minutes after arrival."
"You knew."
"Yes."
"Why did everyone tell me he died at home?"
Daniel's face collapsed.
"Because Hale changed the narrative before you arrived."
"And you let him?"
"I was taken to another hospital."
I stared at him.
He lifted his shirt slightly.
A pale scar crossed his lower ribs.
"Victor had a man waiting outside."
"When I left in my car to follow the ambulance, someone hit me at an intersection."
"The police report called it a hit-and-run."
My anger faltered.
"You were hurt."
"Three broken ribs."
"Collapsed lung."
"Concussion."
"By the time I was discharged, Robert was cremated."
I looked at Detective Ortiz.
"Can we verify this?"
"Already doing it."
She held up her phone.
"Hospital records show Daniel was admitted that night."
Daniel met my eyes.
"I should have told you."
"Yes."
"I thought Evelyn's forgery started all of it."
"I thought if I exposed everything, she would go to prison."
"Then she disappeared."
"And I convinced myself silence protected you too."
I looked back at the screen.
"It protected them."
"I know."
The forensic technician advanced the file.
There was more.
At 11:18 p.m., after the ambulance left, Marlene returned upstairs.
She entered my father's bedroom.
Victor followed.
They closed the door.
The camera saw only the hallway.
At 11:42, they emerged carrying two bags.
At 11:51, Grant Voss arrived.
At 12:06, Nathan Voss arrived.
They spent more than an hour in the study.
The theft did not stop when my father collapsed.
It accelerated.
They stripped his office while he was dying.
The next morning, Hale signed the death certificate.
The next day, Nathan filed emergency estate paperwork.
The day after that, Marlene arranged cremation.
The structure was suddenly visible.
Not one perfect murder plan.
A chain of people covering one another because each had too much to lose.
Ortiz received confirmation that the first 911 call had been canceled from the address by someone claiming it was accidental.
The cancellation call was made by Dr. Hale.
He used my father's landline.
That was enough for prosecutors to move harder.
Hale was detained pending charges related to obstruction and falsification of medical records.
Nathan and Grant Voss were held on financial and evidence-tampering charges.
Victor's home and offices were searched.
Marlene was arrested for assaulting me before sunset.
It should have felt like the end.
Instead, it felt like the beginning of a much uglier fight.
Because the next morning, Marlene's lawyer filed an emergency petition.
She claimed my father had been mentally incompetent when he created the trust giving me control.
She claimed I had manipulated him.
She claimed Northstar belonged partly to Jason.
And worst of all, she attached a psychiatric evaluation stating that my father had suffered from severe cognitive decline for nearly a year before his death.
The evaluation was signed by a doctor I had never heard of.
Dr. Martin Cole.
Daniel recognized the name immediately.
"He wasn't your father's psychiatrist."
"Then who is he?"
Daniel looked at the signature.
"Victor Sloane's brother-in-law."
The hearing was set for seventy-two hours later.
If Marlene convinced a judge there was enough doubt, my control of the trust could be temporarily frozen.
Seventy-two hours.
May you like
For the first time, we had a deadline.
And Marlene had found a way to fight me from a jail cell.
