CHAPTER FIVE
ALYSSA
The missing security footage covered six hours.
Alyssa had expected six minutes.
Carmen stood beside her in the estate’s control room while four monitors displayed the private corridors, gatehouse, pool deck and service drive. Morning traffic moved beyond the outer wall. Inside the estate, every camera showed calm water, clean limestone and staff carrying out ordinary tasks.
The gap ran from ten fifty-eight on the morning of the luncheon until four fifty-nine that afternoon.
Alyssa checked the timestamp again.
“Can footage be removed accidentally?” she asked.
Mateo, the overnight security supervisor, shook his head. “The system records continuously. A camera can fail, but the archive would show an interruption. These files were deleted.”
“By whom?”
“I’m checking the access log.”
He moved between screens, typing with the concentration of a surgeon who had discovered the wrong organ missing.
The control room sat behind the service garage, far enough from the main house that Damian rarely visited.
Alyssa had approved the room’s finishes eight years earlier.
Gray acoustic panels. Locked equipment cabinets.
A counter deep enough for six monitors and a coffee machine that security staff had replaced three times without telling her.
Carmen folded her arms. “Which cameras?”
“The west corridor,” Mateo said. “Second-floor landing. Dressing-room approach. The camera outside Mrs Vader’s office.”
All useful to Vanessa.
Alyssa rested one hand on the counter. “Any others?”
“Not yet.”
“What does ‘not yet’ mean?”
“I have to compare the local server against backup storage.”
“How long?”
“An hour.”
Carmen glanced toward the door. “Mr Vader should be told.”
“He will be.”
Alyssa wanted facts before Damian arrived and converted the missing files into another question about her certainty.
Mateo opened a new window.
A list of system activity filled the screen. Each entry carried a time, action and user code. He scrolled past camera maintenance, gate access and the previous week’s software update.
His hand stopped.
“What?” Alyssa asked.
“The deletion used an administrative account.”
“Whose?”
Mateo looked at her.
“Mr Vader’s.”
Carmen muttered in Spanish.
Alyssa leaned closer. The code beside the deletion matched Damian’s name and executive access level.
“He didn’t delete it,” she said.
“I’m not suggesting he did.”
“Can the code be copied?”
“The password, yes. The physical token is harder.”
“Damian has a token?”
“His phone generates one. There is also a printed recovery code in the emergency-access file. It is meant for hurricanes and system failure.”
“Where is the file?”
Mateo glanced at Damian’s name on the screen. “His study.”
Alyssa thought of Damian’s phone left on desks, charging beside the bed or passed to assistants during meetings. He treated the estate’s security systems as equipment purchased for staff to operate. The technical safeguards existed. His attention to them did not.
“Was the token used?” she asked.
Mateo opened another log. “Yes.”
“So whoever deleted the footage had his phone.”
“Or remote access to it.”
Carmen’s face tightened.
Alyssa noticed.
“What do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“You reacted.”
“Mr Vader leaves his phone in the study.”
“Who has been in the study?”
Carmen looked at Mateo.
He stepped away from the keyboard. “I’ll check the backups.”
The request for privacy was obvious. Carmen waited until the door closed behind him.
“I saw Ms Laurent near the study yesterday,” she said.
“What time?”
“Around noon.”
“The luncheon had already started.”
“Yesterday, not the day of the luncheon.”
Alyssa kept her voice level. “Did she go inside?”
“I was carrying flowers to the dining room. She stood beside the door. When she saw me, she asked where the library was.”
“She knows where the library is.”
“I told her that.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was distracted.”
Carmen smoothed the front of her black uniform. The movement was unusual. Carmen could supervise a wedding breakfast, a plumbing failure and an intoxicated senator without wrinkling a cuff.
“Has she entered the study before?” Alyssa asked.
“I have seen her in the west corridor several times.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did not see her touch anything.”
“You saw her where she had no reason to be.”
“Mr Vader said she was frightened and unsettled. Staff were asked to avoid making her feel watched.”
“Who gave that instruction?”
“Mr Vader.”
Of course he had.
Alyssa looked through the narrow window in the control-room door. Mateo stood in the garage speaking into his radio.
“Did Vanessa ask you about the cameras?”
Carmen hesitated.
“Carmen.”
“She asked whether the guesthouse cameras recorded sound.”
“When?”
“The first morning.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That no cameras were inside the guesthouse.”
“And the corridors?”
“I said the estate had security throughout the public areas.”
“Did she ask how long recordings were kept?”
“No.”
Alyssa studied the woman who had managed her home for thirteen years. “There’s more.”
Carmen’s attention moved toward the monitors.
“Tell me.”
“I saw her with your phone.”
Alyssa went still. “When?”
“The night Sophie had the nightmare. Mr Vader carried the child downstairs. Ms Laurent came after. Your phone was on the table beside the bedroom door.”
Alyssa remembered leaving it there while she fetched a blanket.
“She picked it up?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do?”
“Only looked at the screen. Perhaps ten seconds. She returned it when she heard Mr Vader.”
“Why did you keep this from me?”
Carmen’s mouth tightened. “I should have told you.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
Alyssa waited.
Carmen had defended staff members against abusive guests, dismissed a chef for stealing tips and once stood between Elena Vader and a florist until Damian’s mother stopped shouting. Fear sat badly on her.
“What did Vanessa say to you?” Alyssa asked.
Carmen looked at the closed door. “Nothing important.”
Carmen’s phone vibrated. She looked at the screen and silenced it so quickly Alyssa caught only a Miami number and her nephew Rafael’s first name in the message preview.
“Did Vanessa ask about your family?” Alyssa said.
Carmen’s face closed. “She asks many questions.”
“Important enough to make you lie.”
“I did not lie.”
“You withheld information concerning my phone and private rooms.”
Carmen’s face hardened. “I am sorry.”
The apology ended the conversation more efficiently than an argument.
Alyssa disliked it.
Before she could press, the door opened.
Damian entered with Julian behind him.
Neither man had dressed for the office. Damian wore dark pants and a white shirt without a jacket. Julian carried a tablet and looked as though someone had interrupted his breakfast, which was likely true.
“Mateo called,” Damian said. “What was deleted?”
“The footage covering the morning of the bracelet theft.”
His gaze sharpened. “How much?”
“Six hours.”
Julian stepped toward the monitor. “That’s precise.”
“It includes the private corridor, second-floor landing and the approach to my office,” Alyssa said.
Damian turned to Mateo. “Who accessed the system?”
“Your administrative account.”
Julian looked at Damian.
“I did not delete anything,” Damian said.
“No one thinks you did,” Alyssa replied.
The speed of his denial proved he understood how the log appeared.
Mateo displayed the entries. “Your password was accepted with an executive recovery credential at eleven forty-three. The system records it in the same authentication field as your phone token.”
“At the luncheon,” Julian said.
Damian took out his phone. “This was with me.”
“Was it?” Alyssa asked.
“Yes.”
“The entire time?”
He frowned. “It was in my jacket during lunch.”
“Where was the jacket?”
“On the back of my chair.”
“Did you leave the room?”
“I spoke with the hotel manager.”
“For how long?”
“Five minutes. Perhaps more.”
“Vanessa was at the hotel.”
Damian’s eyes hardened. “So were thirty foundation guests and dozens of staff.”
“Only one had been upstairs near the bracelet.”
“You don’t know she was upstairs.”
“She was in the west corridor for six minutes.”
“That does not place her in our bedroom.”
Julian cleared his throat. “We should keep this technical.”
Alyssa looked at him. “The technical facts lead to a person.”
“They lead to an account,” Julian said. “We need to determine how the account was used.”
Damian gestured toward the screen. “Could Charles have accessed the phone remotely?”
Mateo considered. “In theory.”
Alyssa almost admired how quickly Damian found a man eighty miles away.
“In practice?” she asked.
“Remote-control software could capture a token. He would need access to Mr Vader’s device or cloud account first.”
“Charles owns a data-security firm,” Damian said.
Julian’s expression changed. “A minority share in one.”
“He has the resources.”
“So does Vanessa,” Alyssa said.
Damian turned toward her. “She does not run a technical company.”
“She has access to your house, your phone and your jacket.”
“She has no reason to know the security architecture.”
“She asked Carmen whether the guesthouse cameras recorded sound.”
Carmen’s face tightened.
Damian looked at her. “When?”
“The morning after Ms Laurent arrived.”
“And you are only mentioning it now?”
Carmen lifted her chin. “I answered the question. I did not consider it suspicious at the time.”
Alyssa watched Damian absorb that.
He had trusted Vanessa’s concern about surveillance enough to make the question innocent.
“What else?” he asked.
Carmen said nothing about Alyssa’s phone.
Alyssa looked at her. Carmen kept her attention on Damian.
Mateo switched to another screen. “There is also an attempted login from outside the estate network.”
“When?” Julian asked.
“Three hours after the deletion.”
“Successful?”
“No.”
Damian nodded once, as if a failed login settled the matter. “Charles tested access after using the phone token.”
Alyssa stared at him. “That is one interpretation.”
“It is supported by the timing.”
“So is Vanessa checking whether the copied credentials worked remotely.”
His expression cooled. “You have already decided.”