Chapter 16 - The Safehouse
I spent the first hour making the cabin as comfortable as possible. I built a roaring fire in the iron stove, wrapped the children in heavy wool blankets from the cedar chests, and made them hot chocolate using powdered milk from the pantry.
Once their breathing evened out in a deep, exhausted sleep on the oversized sofa, I sat at the scratched wooden dining table and went to work.
I carefully extracted the bloody camera from the plastic bag, wearing the latex gloves. I connected it to the new laptop, the screen illuminating the dark cabin with a harsh blue glow.
The main storage drive had been completely wiped. There wasn't a single video file left on the primary partition. David's men had been thorough, but not thorough enough.
I launched the forensic recovery software, running a deep-level decryption scan on the camera's internal memory matrix. Hours ticked by. The sun began to rise over the snowy peaks, casting long, gray shadows through the cabin windows.
Finally, the laptop chimed. The software had successfully rebuilt a fragmented, deleted partition.
My pulse pounded against my temples as I clicked on the restored video file, dated New Year's Day at 2:15 AM.
The grainy, black-and-white footage showed the front porch of Mr. Henderson's house. A large man in a tactical jacket stepped into the frame. He pulled a suppressed pistol from his waist and kicked the front door open. The man's face was completely visible to the camera before he shattered the lens.
It was Silas, David's head of private security. The man who shadowed my ex-husband everywhere.
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But it was the background of the footage that made the breath leave my lungs. Parked on the street behind Silas was a sleek town car with the windows rolled down.
Sitting in the passenger seat, watching the murder take place with a calm, indifferent expression, was my father. He wasn't a hostage. He wasn't in a psychiatric facility. He was David's willing partner.
