Chapter 5 - The Midnight Meeting
The fluorescent lights of the Route 9 diner buzzed with a low, irritating hum that matched the frantic static inside my head. Outside, a light drizzle had begun to slick the asphalt, reflecting the neon pink sign of the coffee shop in long, smeared ribbons across the parking lot. I pulled my wool coat tighter around my shoulders, keeping the deep red velvet gown safely packed away in the trunk of my car, though the memory of it still clung to my skin like a brand.
I sat alone in a vinyl booth near the back, stirring a cup of lukewarm black coffee I had no intention of drinking. The bell above the diner door jingled softly, and a man in a rumpled gray trench coat walked in, shaking the rain from his shoulders. He scanned the nearly empty room, his eyes locking onto mine before he headed straight for my booth and slid onto the bench opposite me.
"You came," he said. His voice was gravelly, worn down by too many late nights and bad news. He wore a heavy silver ring on his right hand—the same ring I had glimpsed in the background of several foundation compliance reports.
"Who are you?" I asked, keeping my hands flat on the laminate table, deliberately away from my coat pockets. "And why did you text me about the security backup?"
The man pulled a small, battered laptop from his leather briefcase and set it on the table. He didn't answer my question immediately; instead, he popped open the casing and pressed a key to wake the screen. A video file began to play, muted and grainy, but unmistakably shot from the black dome camera mounted on our dining room ceiling.
"My name is Julian," he said quietly, leaning forward so I had to strain to hear him over the hum of the refrigerator behind the counter. "I was Person B's lead researcher at the foundation. She knew the foundation accounts were being hollowed out to fund private real estate holdings overseas. She came to your house tonight to confront you both with the proof."
I watched the grainy video unfold on the small screen. It showed Person B walking through the dining room, talking animatedly, and then—before the struggle even began—it showed Marcus walking quietly into the room from the side hallway five minutes earlier than he had ever admitted to the police, placing a small device on the media controller.
"Marcus knew she was coming," I breathed, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
"Marcus didn't just know," Julian said, his eyes fixed piercingly on mine. "He rigged the smart-home system to lock the exterior doors the second she stepped inside. He wanted a confrontation. He wanted her discredited, or worse."
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Julian closed the laptop with a sharp snap that made the coffee cups rattle on their saucers. He slid a small paper envelope across the table toward me. "The original unedited file is on that drive. If you want to survive what Marcus has planned next, you need to use it before he realizes the cloud backup wasn't routed through his home server."
I looked down at the envelope, feeling the entire foundation of my life give way beneath me. The diner door chimed again, and through the rain-streaked window, I saw Marcus's dark sedan pull slowly into the empty parking lot, its headlights cutting through the dark like searching eyes.
