Chapter 5 - The Lamp Was Never Just a Lamp
I had thought Tessa left the hallway lamp on because she was considerate.
The truth was far more disturbing.
Four years earlier, on her second week in my house, she had noticed a tiny reflection inside the brass base.
A lens.
The camera was positioned directly toward my bedroom door.
“When I moved the lamp,” Tessa told me, “the angle changed.”
She had never removed the device.
She was afraid whoever installed it would know she had discovered it.
Instead, every night, she rotated the lamp six degrees toward the wall.
Just enough to block the view.
Then she rotated it back each morning.
Four years.
Every night.
Without telling me.
“Why?”
“Because Nicholas told me something before he died.”
“What?”
Tessa looked at Eli, who was asleep in the next room.
“Someone had been tracking your schedule before the explosion.”
Brendan and I returned to the mansion after midnight.
We dismantled the lamp.
The camera had no wireless transmitter.
It was hardwired through the wall.
Someone had installed it during renovations seven years earlier.
The contractor records led to a shell company.
That shell company belonged to a law office.
Keane & Mercer.
Graham’s firm.
My stomach turned cold.
Then Brendan found something worse.
A second wire ran beneath the floor.
It led into my private study.
We followed it to the cabinet where I kept medication, passports, and emergency cash.
Behind the cabinet was another camera.
“You’ve been watched for years,” Brendan said.
I thought of Graham sitting across from me during meetings.
Graham telling me which threats mattered.
Graham recommending which employees could be trusted.
Tessa had not only made sure my prescription was refilled.
She had been checking the bottle seals.
“Why?”
She hesitated.
“Because twice I found them broken.”
I stared at her.
“What did you do?”
“Replaced the medication before you took it.”
Brendan immediately sent the oldest unopened bottle we could locate for private laboratory testing.
The result came back the next afternoon.
The tablets were blood pressure medication.
But the dosage was nearly triple what my physician had prescribed.
Enough, taken consistently, to cause dizziness, collapse, or worse.
May you like
Someone had not been watching me die.
Someone had been patiently trying to make my death look natural.
