Chapter 9
The Wrong Woman in the Video
The live upload ended with Lucy's face still close to the camera.
Claire watched the black screen for another ten seconds. Tess stood beside her with both hands flat on the table. Neither woman spoke. The house had become a listening device, every pipe and floorboard suddenly capable of holding a witness.
Daniel called from the driveway.
He had returned without knocking.
“You need to leave,” Claire said.
“Where?” Tess asked.
“Somewhere the cameras cannot hear us.”
Daniel entered with rain on his shoulders. He saw the tablet and stopped.
“What did you open?”
Claire turned the screen toward him.
Lucy Hart's face had been replaced by a login page. The upload no longer existed in the folder.
Daniel looked at Tess. “You accessed the account?”
“It was my mother's.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer you get without a warrant.”
He reached for the tablet. Tess pulled it away.
“You heard the message,” Claire said.
“I heard about a video.”
“You saw the recording.”
“I saw nothing.”
“Then why did you come back?”
Daniel looked at the map on the kitchen table. His attention fixed on the red circle beneath the lodge.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was in the drawer.”
“Who else saw it?”
“Owen Bell, perhaps.”
Daniel picked up the map without touching the ink. “This is not a resort document.”
“You recognize it.”
“I recognize the survey notation.”
Tess folded her arms. “You said there were no tunnels.”
“I said no tunnels were listed in the county file.”
“That is not the same thing.”
He looked at her. “You and your aunt should leave town.”
Claire laughed once. “You told me to come to the station. Now you want me to run?”
“I want you out of a property connected to a dead woman, a missing family, and a private treatment program nobody admits exists.”
“That sounds like a reason to stay.”
Daniel's phone rang before he could answer.
The number was blocked. He listened, face turned away.
“Who was it?” Tess asked.
“The county attorney.”
“What did she want?”
“A competency review.”
Claire felt the room tilt, not from surprise but from recognition. The word had been waiting for her. It appeared wherever a woman described something no one else could see: hysterical, unstable, grieving, confused, unfit.
“For me?”
Daniel did not answer.
His hesitation gave her the answer.
“Owen called the county.”
“He sent them the cabin footage.”
“What footage?”
Daniel opened a message. A video loaded on his phone. It showed Claire entering Cabin 12 at 2:11 a.m. She carried a black case in one hand and looked directly at the camera as if she knew it was there.
Tess stepped closer.
“That is not her,” she said.
“It is my face.”
“It is not the way you walk.”
Claire watched the woman in the video cross the porch. The figure's left shoulder was lower than the right. Claire had injured her shoulder at seventeen and favored the opposite side ever since. The woman on the screen favored the left.
Daniel paused the footage.
“The county says this proves you were at the cabin before dawn.”
“It proves someone built a video of me.”
“The timestamp is from the gate system.”
“The gate system is owned by Owen Bell.”
Daniel's gaze moved to the tablet.
Tess whispered, “The wrong woman is in the video.”
Claire looked at the frozen image.
The woman turned toward the camera. The face looked like Claire's from a distance, but the mouth was slightly wider and the chin softer.
A version of her designed by someone who had only seen photographs.
Daniel shut off the phone.
“There is an old maintenance entrance below the lodge,” he said. “If it still exists, it may connect to Cabin 12.”
“You are taking us there?”
“I am taking you to a place where we can determine whether the map is real.”
“And if it is?”
Daniel opened the door.
“Then the person who altered that video had access to more than a camera.”