Chapter 3 - THE PASSWORD MY DEAD FATHER KNEW
Claire’s father had been dead for twelve years.
Yet someone was using a password he created.
BENNETT1978.
The year he married Claire’s mother.
Claire had used it briefly while building Alder Row because she was exhausted and careless.
Her father had teased her about cybersecurity.
Then he died.
She changed it.
“How would Grant know this?” Hannah asked.
Claire stared at the screen.
“I never told him.”
Evelyn leaned back.
“Was the password written anywhere?”
“Maybe on old paperwork.”
“Where?”
Claire thought about her father’s belongings.
Most were stored inside the Bennett family property outside Asheville.
Except one box.
A box Claire had brought home after her mother sold the old house.
It contained tax records.
Early Alder Row paperwork.
Her father’s notebooks.
Claire stood.
“It’s upstairs.”
The box had been stored inside the guest-room closet.
It was gone.
Claire checked twice.
Then three times.
Finally she sat on the floor.
“Grant moved it.”
Hannah crouched beside her.
“Are you sure?”
“I haven’t touched it in two years.”
They searched.
Nothing.
Evelyn called a private digital-forensics specialist.
His name was Noah Hale.
He arrived that afternoon.
Claire expected someone older.
Noah was forty-three, tall, dark-haired, dressed in a navy shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms.
He listened far more than he spoke.
When Claire finished, he said, “I need your devices.”
“All of them?”
“All.”
He spent two hours examining phones, tablets, routers, smart-home equipment.
Then he found something.
A hidden application on Claire’s phone.
It duplicated text messages.
Location history.
Call logs.
Even deleted files.
Claire felt violated in a way she had not expected.
“He could see everything?”
“Whoever installed this could.”
“For how long?”
“Approximately ten months.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Ten months.
Her private conversations with Hannah.
Messages to doctors.
Financial appointments.
Everything.
Noah looked toward the hallway.
“Who physically handles your phone?”
“Grant.”
“Anyone else?”
“My assistant sometimes.”
“Name?”
“Rebecca Sloan.”
Noah wrote it down.
Then he asked about Claire’s headaches.
She frowned.
“What does that have to do with my phone?”
“Maybe nothing.”
His expression remained calm.
“But surveillance plus a planned medical-capacity challenge makes me cautious.”
Claire remembered Grant’s concern.
Again?
You’ve been having a lot of those lately.
Noah asked to see her medication.
Claire brought down the sleep aid she occasionally used.
He studied the bottle.
“Your prescription?”
“Yes.”
“You recognize the tablets?”
Claire did.
Mostly.
Then she looked closer.
Two tablets were a slightly different shade.
Noah did not touch them.
“Don’t take any more.”
Her stomach dropped.
“You think someone changed them?”
“I think we test before guessing.”
Evelyn arranged laboratory analysis.
By evening, preliminary results came back.
The tablets were not Claire’s prescribed medication.
They contained a stronger sedative.
Enough to create confusion and impaired concentration if taken repeatedly.
Claire gripped the kitchen table.
Grant had been documenting her instability.
Now someone had been manufacturing it.
Hannah whispered, “I’m going to kill him.”
“No.”
Claire’s voice surprised everyone.
“No one does anything.”
She looked at Noah.
“Can we prove who put those tablets there?”
“Maybe.”
He opened an image from the home-security archive.
Someone had entered the house three weeks earlier while Claire and Grant were both supposedly at work.
The person used Grant’s access code.
The camera caught only a partial profile.
Blond hair.
Woman.
Tessa.
Claire felt a sick sense of certainty.
Then Noah enlarged the image.
Tessa wasn’t alone.
A second figure appeared behind her.
Smaller.
Dark hair.
Claire recognized the handbag before the face.
May you like
Her executive assistant.
Rebecca Sloan.
