Chapter 2 - The Hidden Camera
Two days later, Evelyn sat in her glass-walled home office on the third floor, staring at a live laptop feed of her own living room.
She wasn't spying on Sophie. She was reviewing security footage from the front foyer, searching for an internal leak. A confidential merger proposal for Hartwell Data Systems had leaked to a rival firm two days prior, and according to her chief security officer, the file could only have been accessed from a terminal inside the main residence.
Her finger hovered over the timeline scrubber, dragging it back to Tuesday evening—the night of the kitchen flood.
The video loaded.
On screen, Sophie marched into the kitchen carrying the heavy bucket of dirty water. She deliberately tipped it over, watching the water flood the white marble. Then, she stood back with her arms folded, waiting for the explosion.
Evelyn watched, holding her breath, expecting the usual frantic response or a call to security.
Instead, Mason Reed entered the frame.
What caught Evelyn’s attention wasn't Mason’s calm reaction to the mess. It was what happened after Sophie went upstairs to bed.
On the screen, Mason finished mopping the floor. He leaned his mop against the counter, but instead of leaving immediately, he walked over to the smart-home terminal built into the kitchen wall—the same terminal that housed access codes for the estate's private network.
Evelyn leaned closer to her laptop, her breath catching in her throat.
Mason didn't touch the terminal to steal data. He didn't plug in a thumb drive. Instead, he pulled a small, sleek electronic device from his pocket—a diagnostic sniffer—and plugged it directly into the console’s hidden maintenance port.
A tiny green light blinked twice.
On the video, Mason’s face hardened. He pulled the device out, slipped it back into his jacket, and stared directly into the security camera lens mounted above the pantry door.
It wasn't a coincidence. He had known the camera was there.
And as he looked into the lens, Mason Reed mouthed three distinct words: “Check the logs.”
Evelyn’s heart hammered against her ribs. Her hands shook as she closed the live feed, navigated to the internal network security logs, and typed her master administrator key.
The screen flashed red.
Unauthorized Access Detected. IP Address: 192.168.1.145 (Guest House).
May you like
The guest house was currently unoccupied. Or so she had been told.
Without a second thought, Evelyn stood up, grabbed her heavy brass desk key, and walked briskly out of her office, down the grand staircase, and out across the manicured lawn toward the secluded guest cottage at the edge of the estate.
