tree line.

A faint orange glow pulsed against the low clouds.

His blood ran cold.

“No.”

He ran toward his truck.

Victor caught up.

“Daniel, what are you thinking?”

“Grant is burning the evidence.”

The return drive took six minutes.

By the time they reached the mansion, smoke poured from a rear garage window.

Grant stood in the driveway shouting into his phone.

A landscaping employee was dragging a hose across the stone courtyard.

Daniel’s old instincts took control.

He smelled burning plastic before he reached the garage.

Electronics.

Marissa blocked Grant as Daniel and Victor moved toward the smoke.

“You can’t enter,” she warned.

Daniel stopped.

She was right.

He was retired.

He had no protective equipment.

No authority.

And this was now an active emergency scene.

Sirens approached from the main road.

Grant pointed toward the garage.

“Electrical fire!” he shouted.

“It started by itself!”

Daniel looked at the exterior wall.

The breaker panel was open.

Too convenient.

Then he noticed the security cameras.

Every lens around the garage had been turned downward.

Not damaged.

Turned.

He pointed it out to Victor.

Victor’s face hardened.

“Someone didn’t want the approach recorded.”

Fire crews arrived and contained the blaze before it spread to the main house.

Inside the garage, investigators found two melted computer towers, a stack of burned paper records, and an accelerant container beside a workbench.

Grant insisted it was cleaning solvent.

The fire marshal did not argue with him.

He simply photographed it.

That frightened Grant more.

By midnight, Laura had been examined at a hospital and interviewed privately.

Daniel remained in the waiting room, holding the unopened flash drive.

Samuel sat across from him.

“You can open it now,” Samuel said.

Daniel looked at the small black device.

“She trusted me not to.”

“She also trusted you to know when the promise ended.”

Daniel turned the drive over in his hand.

A nurse entered.

“Mr.

Mercer?”

He stood.

“Your sister asked to see you.”

Laura was sitting upright in the hospital bed when he entered.

Her cheek had swollen, but her eyes looked clearer than they had in years.

Daniel pulled a chair close.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner,” he said.

Laura shook her head.

“You did see it.”

“I should’ve done more.”

“He made me defend him.”

Her voice cracked.

“Every time you asked if I was okay, I went home and told him.

Then he used it as proof that you were trying to ruin our marriage.”

Daniel felt sick.

Laura looked at his coat pocket.

“You still have it?”

He placed the flash drive on the blanket.

She stared at it for a long time.

“I almost destroyed that thing a hundred times.”

“What’s on it?”

“Recordings.

Photos of documents.

Screenshots.

A video.”

Daniel waited.

Laura’s expression changed.

“The video is why he can’t talk his way out of this.”

Later that night, with investigators present, the drive was opened on an isolated forensic computer.

The folders were carefully labeled by date.

Financial transfers.

Threatening messages.

Audio recordings of Grant berating employees.

Photographs of bruises Laura had documented privately.

Then they reached the video.

It had been recorded in Grant’s study eleven months earlier.

The camera angle was low, apparently from Laura’s phone hidden on a shelf.

Grant stood behind