Chapter 8 — What Rosie Hid

Mateo didn’t put the card into the first computer he found.

He called someone he trusted, then brought a laptop into Jericho’s office and disconnected it from the house network.

I sat beside him.

Jericho stood behind my chair, Rosie’s bow still wrapped around two fingers.

The card held folders with dates for names.

Documents.

Photographs.

Audio files.

A handful of short videos.

“Make a copy first,” I said.

Mateo nodded.

While he worked, I examined the file list.

Several account numbers matched entries in the ledger.

The first photograph showed Celeste and Vane outside a marina.

The date was six months after the explosion.

Jericho leaned closer.

I heard his breath catch.

There were other photographs.

Celeste entering a warehouse.

Vane speaking to a man I recognized from an old foundation event.

A scanned payment schedule bearing the same consulting account we had found in her records.

“This is her archive,” I said.

Mateo opened a document.

Names filled the screen beside amounts and brief descriptions.

Some were familiar from newspapers.

Others meant nothing to me.

Together, they explained why Celeste had kept the accounts separate and why the ledger mattered.

The ledger connected numbers to transactions.

The card connected transactions to people.

One video had no date in its filename.

Only a string of numbers.

Mateo clicked it.

The image tilted sideways.

For a moment, I saw a doorframe and a strip of carpet.

Then Celeste stepped into view.

She was standing in the mansion’s study.

Vane faced her.

“The girl found Nora,” he said.

Jericho’s hand settled on the back of my chair.

Celeste set a glass on the desk.

“Then let her make contact.”

“She’s been asking about Belladonna.”

“Nora works there three nights a week.”

“How much does Rosie understand?”

“Enough to be troublesome. Not enough to be useful.”

The camera shifted.

I heard a small breath close to the microphone.

Rosie.

“She made this,” I whispered.

Nobody answered.

On the screen, Vane folded his arms.

“And your husband?”

“He’ll investigate the waitress. He’ll find the photograph and believe he’s solving something.”

“Suppose Nora refuses the position.”

“She won’t leave a lonely child with nobody to trust.”

I felt sick.

Celeste knew exactly which part of me to reach for.

Vane glanced toward the doorway.

“What happens after she restores access?”

Celeste took a moment before answering.

“Neither of them leaves.”

The video ended.

Jericho pulled out the chair beside mine.

He sat slowly.

I stared at the black screen.

Rosie had been close enough to hear that.

Close enough to understand that her mother meant to hurt her father and the woman she had sought out.

And she had still come to the restaurant.

Mateo replayed the beginning without sound.

“Look.”

A dark case sat beside Celeste’s laptop.

Its flap was open.

Inside were several small cards in labeled sleeves.

“She may have taken one from that case,” he said.

“We’ll ask her when she’s home,” Jericho replied.

Not if.

When.

I held on to the word.

Mrs. Alden asked to see us after the doctor finished treating her.

She sat upright in a guest room with a dressing above her eyebrow.

“I heard someone outside Rosie’s door,” she said. “The guard told me it was a maintenance inspection.”

Jericho stood near the bed.

“Which guard?”

She gave a name.

The missing one.

“He said you had authorized it. Then the lights went out.”

Her voice shook.

“When they came back, Celeste was standing in the hallway.”

She looked at Jericho.

“I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

“What happened next?”

“She called Rosie to her. Rosie wouldn’t go.”

I gripped the back of a chair.

“Celeste told her you’d sent her to collect her. I said we should call you.”

Mrs. Alden touched the dressing.

“The guard struck me.”

Jericho’s face went still.

“You couldn’t have stopped them.”

“I should have kept her in the room.”

“You tried.”

“She was asking for Lennox when they took her.”

I closed my eyes.

Jericho moved beside me.

His hand touched my back, briefly and deliberately.

We left only after Mrs. Alden agreed to let the doctor give her something for the pain.

In the corridor, Jericho said, “I’m taking this outside the family.”

I looked at him.

“The evidence?”

“All of it.”

“Celeste said she’d know.”

“Celeste says whatever keeps us alone.”

He was right.

I had learned that five years too late.

His lawyer arrived through a side entrance with a second specialist she had brought herself.

We met in a room without the mansion’s usual equipment.

Mateo gave them copies of the ledger pages and a verified duplicate of the card.

I kept the original.

The lawyer watched the video twice.

Then she looked at Jericho.

“These files could implicate parts of your business.”

“I know.”

“They won’t investigate only Celeste.”

“I know.”

She turned to me.

“And you’ll need to explain your role in the original account system.”

“I will.”

Jericho glanced at me.

I continued before he could speak.

“I’ve spent five years letting her explain my life. I’m done.”

We agreed on a submission plan.

Copies would leave the house immediately. The investigators receiving them would also receive the abduction video and our account of the oceanarium attack.

Nothing depended on one laptop surviving.

Nothing depended on Celeste allowing us to leave.

While the lawyer made calls, I opened a copy of the account recovery documentation.

Some screens had changed.

The underlying structure hadn’t.

Celeste had preserved my independent authorization because she needed it. In doing so, she had preserved the safeguards attached to it.

I read until I found the condition I remembered.

Disputed access.

A recovery could restore entry.

It could also trigger a hold if the authorizing party reported coercion.

I showed the specialist.

“Does this still operate?”

She examined the documents.

“Not by itself. We’d need the current provider involved.”

“Can you reach them?”

“Through the investigators, yes.”

We worked through what could be arranged before I reached the account terminal.

No impossible promises.

No button that could erase an entire criminal network.

Just records prepared for delivery, authorization ready for verification, and a mechanism to stop Celeste from taking the money the instant she obtained access.

Jericho watched from across the table.

“You knew this was there.”

“I helped put it there.”

“Why?”

“Because someone should be able to say they’re being forced.”

His gaze moved toward the closed door.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Celeste’s message arrived shortly before dawn.

A location.

A vessel name.

A photograph of Rosie seated beneath a metal console.

She was still wearing her nightgown.

Beside the image was a deadline.

Jericho and Nora.

The ledger.

No substitutes.

I zoomed in.

A painted emergency label appeared on the wall behind Rosie. A narrow observation window reflected part of the room.

Vane stood near the door.

Holding a gun.

Jericho reached for the phone.

I kept looking.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“There’s a camera above the terminal.”

Mateo leaned over my shoulder.

Celeste wasn’t just planning to watch us approach.

She intended to record the authorization.

To make me appear willing.

I looked down at the recovery forms we had prepared.

Then at the child beneath the console.

Celeste had built a trap around the person I used to be.

This time, I would enter it knowing exactly what she wanted.