The Router Hack

The slip up was a flare in the dark. *Liam.* Elena didn't know who Liam was, but the way Val had looked at her—as if Elena were the intruder in her own home—told her that the time for quiet observation was over. She had to get back behind the curtain.

She waited for the sound of the nursery door clicking shut. Val had retreated to the guest wing, likely to vent to the deep voice in the machine. Marcus was still in his study, the low drone of his "conference call" vibrating through the floorboards.

Elena moved to the basement stairs, her hand clutching the brass override key inside her bra. She reached the server room door, the keypad glowing a defiant red. Marcus had changed the code an hour ago, effectively blinding her.

She didn't try the numbers. She found the narrow seam at the edge of the faceplate and pried it back with her fingernail. Beneath was a small, circular keyhole. She inserted the brass key.

The lock turned with a heavy, satisfying *clunk*.

Inside, the server room was a cave of blinking blue and green lights. Elena went straight to the main terminal. She needed to bypass Marcus’s blacklist. She plugged a legacy laptop directly into the router’s port, bypassing the wireless restrictions entirely.

"Think, Elena," she whispered. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

She wasn't just resetting her access. she was mapping the ghost traffic. She opened the monitoring software for the guest cottage cameras. Marcus had shown her these before—the "safety loop" that allowed them to monitor the cottage without invading Diana’s privacy.

But when she opened the cottage feed, the imagery was stagnant. The fireplace flames didn't flicker. The shadows on the wall were frozen.

She looked at the metadata. *Source: Local_Buffer_01. status: Looping.*

It was a recording. A perfect, seamless loop designed to show an empty, peaceful room while the real Val did God-knows-what in the main house.

Elena bypassed the buffer, yanking the live stream from the hardware itself. The screen flickered, a jagged line of static tearing through the fake peace.

The live feed resolved.

Val was in the cottage living room, but she wasn't alone. A man Elena didn't recognize was standing by the window. He was large, wearing a tactical jacket, his back to the camera. Val was handing him a stack of papers—the guardianship documents Elena had seen in the office.

"The wife is getting squirrelly," Val said, her voice clear now that Elena had a direct connection. "She asked about the lake. She noticed the hair. Marcus is losing his grip on her."

The man turned slightly, and Elena saw the glint of a watch on his wrist. It was Marcus’s watch. The Patek Philippe she had bought him for their fifth anniversary.

She zoomed in, her breath hitching. The man wasn't Marcus. But he was wearing Marcus’s clothes. He was the heavy-set man from the footsteps.

Elena’s eyes darted to the corner of the video frame, where the system overlay displayed the diagnostic information.

The time stamp on the video feed said 'October 12'. It was February.