Chapter 8 - The Monster Under the Bed
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"Wait," Evan said, stopping Grace before she could close the video player. He pointed to a second audio-visual file on the memory card labeled 03:00_MONITOR_LOG. "What is this second file?"
Grace hesitated for a fraction of a second, genuine pity flashing in her dark eyes.
"That’s the reason your children started flinching whenever someone said your name, Mr. Whitaker," Grace said softly. "You don't have to watch all of it."
"Play it," Evan commanded, his voice shaking with a cold, lethal rage.
He tapped the screen.
The infrared camera showed the nursery at three o'clock in the morning, forty-five minutes after Arthur and Dr. Vane had left the room. As the mild sedative Dr. Vane had slipped into their evening milk began to wear off, three-year-old Caleb stirred in his toddler bed, whimpering softly in the dark for his sister.
Sophie slipped out of her bed in her flannel nightgown and climbed into Caleb’s bed to hold him.
"I think someone was in our room again, Caleb," Sophie whispered on the recording, looking toward the locked door. "When Daddy comes home from London, I’m going to tell him—"
Suddenly, the little green LED light on the plastic baby monitor sitting on the nightstand blinked on.
A voice came through the speaker into the dark nursery.
It wasn't Vanessa’s voice. It wasn't Arthur’s voice.
It was Evan’s voice—synthesized by an AI voice-cloning program trained on hours of his corporate speeches, cold, booming, and terrifyingly real in the quiet bedroom.
"I can see you through the camera, Sophie," the fake voice of her father hissed through the baby monitor. "And I hate little girls who tattle on Vanessa. If you say one word to me when I come home, or if Caleb cries downstairs tomorrow, I am going to put both of you in a dark car and give you away forever. Now go back to your bed and shut your mouth."
On the screen, seven-year-old Sophie froze in sheer, heartbreaking terror, scrambling back to her bed and pulling the blanket over her head while Caleb buried his face in his pillow and shook silently in the dark.
Evan slowly lowered the phone.
A single tear cut a clean path through the garden dirt on his cheek, while inside his chest, every trace of mercy he had ever possessed burned away to white-hot iron.
For weeks, his seven-year-old daughter and three-year-old son had lain awake in the dark believing their own father was watching them through the walls and threatening to abandon them if they asked for help.
"Where are Arthur and Dr. Vane right now?" Evan asked, his voice so quiet that Old Tom looked back from down the tunnel.
"Right above us on the second floor," Grace said, checking her watch. "The seventh and final vault window opens at twelve noon—eighteen minutes from now. Since you showed up alive on the terrace and ruined their forged London power-of-attorney, Arthur and Vanessa have only one play left. They have fifty guests locked on the patio without cell service, and they think they can hunt us down in the gardens, force your thumb onto the vault scanner behind the master study, and stage a home-invasion shootout where the 'disgruntled gardener' and the 'rogue maid' killed you after you discovered them."
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Evan looked down the brick tunnel at Old Tom, who was sitting beside Sophie and Caleb behind the three-inch steel blast door of the subterranean panic room.
"Tom, lock this vault door from the inside and do not open it for anyone unless you hear my voice and Grace’s code word," Evan said, handing the old man his burner phone with the memory card locked inside. "Grace—show me the servant stairs."
