Chapter 8: The Missing Recording
Chapter 8: The Missing Recording
A cold silence settled over the conference room after Detective Daniel Brooks ended the call with the FBI.
No one spoke.
Colonel Victoria Hart was the first to break the silence.
"Say it."
Brooks slowly lowered the phone.
"The satellite phone Margaret Prescott used has been under federal surveillance for nearly a year."
Emily frowned.
"Why?"
Brooks looked at each person around the table.
"Because every number connected to it belongs to people suspected of arranging contract killings."
The room fell deathly quiet.
Emily's face turned white.
"So..."
"They weren't just trying to scare me."
Brooks shook his head.
"No."
"They've already tried twice."
Victoria rested a reassuring hand on her daughter's shoulder.
"And they'll never get another chance."
The Safe House
By nightfall, Emily, Rosa Martinez, and Colonel Hart had been transferred to a federal safe house outside Charlotte.
It looked nothing like a government facility.
From the outside, it was an ordinary two-story farmhouse surrounded by old oak trees and open fields.
Inside, however, every entrance was protected.
FBI agents monitored surveillance cameras twenty-four hours a day.
Bullet-resistant windows had been installed years earlier.
No one entered without passing three separate security checkpoints.
Emily stood by the living room window.
"It feels strange."
Victoria smiled gently.
"What does?"
"Being somewhere they can't reach me."
Victoria looked at the armed agents outside.
"They'll try."
Emily looked at her mother.
"You really think they'll come?"
Victoria answered without hesitation.
"They're desperate."
"Desperate people make reckless decisions."
Ethan's Offer
At the county detention center, Ethan Prescott had not slept.
The weight of his confession was beginning to sink in.
When Detective Brooks entered the interview room the following morning, Ethan looked exhausted.
"I'll cooperate."
Brooks sat down.
"I thought you already were."
"No."
Ethan shook his head.
"I only told you about Emily."
Brooks waited.
"There are things Mother never trusted me with."
"But Brandon..."
His voice faltered.
"Brandon handled the dirty work."
Brooks leaned forward.
"What kind of dirty work?"
Ethan looked toward the security camera before lowering his voice.
"There was a recording."
Emily's secret recording.
Brooks' heartbeat quickened.
"The memory card?"
Ethan nodded.
"Mother never destroyed it."
Brooks frowned.
"Why not?"
"Insurance."
Ethan laughed bitterly.
"She never trusted anyone."
"Not even us."
"So where is it?"
Ethan hesitated.
"She moved it."
"After the police searched the chapel."
Brooks stared at him.
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"But Brandon does."
The Butler's Return
That afternoon, another unexpected visitor arrived under FBI escort.
An elderly man stepped cautiously into the safe house.
He wore a neatly pressed gray suit despite the long drive.
His silver hair was combed perfectly.
Emily's eyes widened.
"Mr. Holloway?"
The old man smiled sadly.
"It's good to see you alive, Miss Emily."
Thomas Holloway had served as the Prescott family's chief butler for nearly thirty-five years.
Unlike Rosa, he had disappeared six months earlier without explanation.
Victoria shook his hand.
"I'm Colonel Hart."
"I know."
He smiled politely.
"Emily spoke about you often."
Brooks got straight to the point.
"You left the Prescott estate."
"No."
Thomas sighed.
"I escaped."
The Night Everything Changed
Thomas folded his hands together.
"I remained loyal for decades."
"I convinced myself that silence was professionalism."
"But then..."
He looked at Emily.
"I heard Margaret order Brandon to move a body."
The room froze.
Emily whispered,
"A body?"
Thomas nodded slowly.
"It wasn't Emily."
"It wasn't anyone from the family."
Brooks frowned.
"Who?"
Thomas shook his head.
"I never saw the face."
"I only saw the coffin."
Victoria exchanged a glance with Brooks.
"The fake funeral."
Thomas nodded.
"After that night..."
"I packed one suitcase and left before sunrise."
The Hidden Library
Thomas removed a folded blueprint from his briefcase.
"I couldn't take evidence."
"But I memorized the estate."
He spread the blueprint across the dining table.
The Prescott mansion appeared in remarkable detail.
Brooks pointed toward Margaret's study.
"We already found the hidden safe."
Thomas smiled faintly.
"That's the obvious one."
He tapped another section.
The library.
"Margaret's father designed this room."
"There are two hidden compartments."
Brooks frowned.
"We only found one."
Thomas nodded.
"Because the second one isn't in the wall."
Emily looked closer.
"Where is it?"
Thomas pointed toward a massive antique bookshelf.
"It rotates."
Victoria raised an eyebrow.
"A secret room?"
Thomas nodded.
"I polished that bookshelf every Monday for twenty-eight years."
"I never realized it moved."
"Until one evening..."
He paused.
"I saw Brandon disappear behind it."
The Midnight Search
Within hours, Brooks obtained another search warrant.
Just before midnight, state police, FBI agents, and forensic investigators quietly surrounded the Prescott estate.
The lights inside the mansion were still on.
Margaret hadn't slept either.
Brooks gave the signal.
The front doors opened without resistance.
Room by room, investigators searched the house.
Margaret's study.
Nothing new.
The bedrooms.
Nothing.
Finally...
The library.
Thomas stood beside Brooks.
"There."
He pointed toward a row of leather-bound law books.
"Pull the third volume."
An agent did.
Nothing happened.
Thomas frowned.
"No..."
"The seventh."
The seventh book slid outward with a soft click.
A deep mechanical rumble echoed through the room.
Slowly...
The entire bookshelf rotated.
Behind it lay a narrow hidden chamber.
Every flashlight turned toward the darkness.
Rows of filing cabinets lined the walls.
Shelves filled with hard drives, cash, passports, and sealed boxes stretched into the shadows.
At the center of the room sat a fireproof safe.
Brooks smiled.
"We found it."
Too Late
The safe was forced open twenty minutes later.
Inside were dozens of financial records.
Luxury watches.
Gold bars.
Stacks of foreign currency.
But the evidence everyone wanted...
Was missing.
Brooks searched every shelf personally.
Nothing.
No memory card.
No recording.
No backup drive.
No files labeled with Emily's name.
An FBI agent looked up from another cabinet.
"Detective..."
Brooks turned.
"They cleaned this room recently."
He examined the dust patterns.
Several shelves had clearly held something until very recently.
Someone had emptied them within the last forty-eight hours.
Thomas lowered his head.
"We were too late."
Brandon's Mistake
At dawn, forensic technicians continued processing the hidden room.
One young analyst suddenly called out.
"Detective!"
Brooks hurried over.
"What is it?"
She held up a fingerprint comparison.
"This print doesn't belong to Margaret."
"Whose is it?"
"Brandon Prescott."
Brooks nodded.
"We expected that."
She smiled slightly.
"No..."
She flipped over another page.
"He left it yesterday."
Brooks' expression sharpened.
"Yesterday?"
She nodded.
"He was here after the search warrant."
That meant one thing.
Brandon had removed the missing recording himself.
And wherever Brandon had gone...
The evidence had gone with him.
The Phone Call
Hundreds of miles away, Brandon Prescott drove alone along a deserted highway.
A black duffel bag rested on the passenger seat.
Inside it was a laptop.
Several passports.
Bundles of cash.
And a tiny memory card sealed inside a plastic evidence pouch.
His phone rang.
"Mother."
Margaret's voice remained calm.
"Did you recover everything?"
"Yes."
"No one followed you?"
"I don't think so."
Margaret paused.
"Good."
"Drive to the airfield."
"We're leaving the country."
Brandon glanced into his rearview mirror.
For the first time...
He noticed a black pickup truck maintaining the same distance behind him for nearly twenty miles.
He frowned.
"Mother..."
"What?"
"I think someone is following me."
The line went silent.
Then Margaret spoke four chilling words.
"Don't let them catch you."
The call ended.
Brandon pressed harder on the accelerator.
Behind him, the pickup truck did the same.
Neither driver realized a third vehicleâan unmarked FBI SUV equipped with long-range tracking equipmentâhad quietly joined the chase from a side road.
Inside it, an agent watched Brandon's GPS signal flash across the screen.
He picked up the radio.
"We've located the evidence."
A brief pause followed.
Then headquarters replied.
May you like
"Do not lose him."
End of Chapter 8
