Marcus Intervenes

The officer’s hand hovered near his handcuffs, his eyes darting between Rossi and the bank statement. It was a perfect trap. The time stamp was damning, the motive clear, the evidence overwhelming. Arthur had built a cage out of paper and data, and Elena was sitting squarely in the center of it.

But he didn't know about the mirror.

"Wait," a voice said from the doorway.

It was Marcus.

He was leaning heavily on a crutch, his face a landscape of bruises and butterfly bandages. He wore a hospital gown tucked into jeans that were two sizes too big, likely borrowed from a sympathetic nurse. He looked like he had been run over by a truck, which he had, but his eyes were bright with a feverish intensity.

"Mr. Thorne," Rossi said, surprised. "You should be in the ICU."

"I signed myself out against medical advice," Marcus wheezed, limping into the room. He held up a laptop. "Because I heard my client was about to be railroaded."

"Your client just confessed to assault," Miller said, waving the folder. "And we have proof of embezzlement."

"You have proof of a keystroke," Marcus countered. He set the laptop on the coffee table, wincing as he bent over. "But you don't have proof of who made it."

He opened the laptop. The screen glowed blue.

"I pulled the logs from the library router before Arthur's men ran me off the road," Marcus said. "I knew he would try this. He's predictable."

He tapped a few keys. A graph appeared on the screen, showing network traffic.

"At 8:15 AM, a transfer request was sent from the library computer. IP address 192.168.1.10. That's the desktop in the study."

"Exactly," Miller said. "Where Mrs. St. Clair was."

"But," Marcus said, raising a finger. "At 8:15 AM, the library computer was also running a remote desktop session. Someone was controlling it from an external IP."

He brought up another window.

"IP address 10.0.0.1. That's the internal IP for the master suite. Julian's bedroom."

Elena looked at Marcus. Julian?

"And who was in the master suite at 8:15?" Marcus asked. "Not Elena. She was in the library, holding a gun on Arthur. She didn't have time to log in remotely."

"So it was the husband," Rossi said.

"Or someone who had access to his room," Marcus said. "Someone like his mother. Or his lawyer."

He turned the laptop toward Miller.

"Arthur authorized the transfer, Detective. He used a remote login to trigger it while he was in the room with Elena, knowing she would be blamed. It was a setup."

Miller stared at the screen. The data was there, stark and undeniable.

"This changes things," Rossi said, her voice hard. She looked at Miller. "We need to investigate this further. Don't leave town, Mrs. St. Clair."

"I'm not going anywhere," Elena said. She looked at Marcus. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Marcus said, slumping onto the sofa. "We still have a problem."

"What problem?"

"The tape," Marcus said. "I got your message on the tablet. But the file didn't upload to the cloud. It's stuck on the local server."

"I know," Elena said. "I tried to send it from the bathroom. Victoria blocked it."

"If it's on the local server, we can retrieve it," Rossi said. "We have cyber forensics."

"It's not that simple," Marcus said. "The server is in the wine cellar. And the wine cellar is currently flooded with Halon gas."

Elena looked at the floor. The cellar was below them. A tomb filled with poison and secrets.

"We have to vent it," Elena said.

"We can't," Marcus said. "The ventilation system is locked down. Victoria initiated a full system purge. In twenty minutes, the Halon scrubbers will activate. They don't just remove the gas. They incinerate the air to remove contaminants. It's designed to protect the vintage wines from mold spores."

"Incinerate?"

"It will fry the servers," Marcus said. "And the tape will be gone forever."

Elena looked at the clock. 8:45 AM. They had fifteen minutes.

"I have to go back down," she said.

"You can't," Rossi said. "It's a biohazard zone. You'll suffocate."

"I know the layout," Elena said. "I know where the manual override is. It's next to the safe."

"It's suicide," Marcus said.

"It's the only way to save the children," Elena said. "Without that tape, Victoria keeps custody. Without that tape, she wins."

She looked at Rossi.

"Give me a mask. Give me a tank. I'm going in."

The police hesitated. 'We need to investigate this further. Don't leave town.'