Chapter 3
Inside the brightly lit breakroom of the county medical center, Sarah pressed her forehead against the cool glass of her smartphone. The screen displayed a wide-angle view from the porch camera, capturing every sharp angle of Miller’s uniform and the defensive body language of her brother-in-law. She could hear the tinny, muffled audio feed transmitting the strained conversation through her small Bluetooth earpiece. Her fingers danced across her messaging app, desperately trying to send a priority override code to the house's local server, but the network was refusing her commands. It was locked from the inside.
A younger nurse, junior on the shift, walked past with a stack of patient charts, glancing over with a worried frown. "Sarah, you’ve been glued to that feed for twenty minutes. Is that your family's place out in Westridge? Should I call administration?"
"No, just keep your voice down, Maya," Sarah whispered, her eyes never leaving the pixelated face of Detective Hayes on the screen. "They aren't telling the truth. Claire and David... they aren't just hosting a gathering. There's someone else inside that house. Someone who shouldn't be left alone, especially not with the medical monitors disabled."
On the porch, Detective Hayes reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small electronic diagnostic tool, plugging it directly into the auxiliary port beneath the keypad housing. A series of rapid amber lights flashed along the device's edge, signaling a data handshake with the front door's memory bank.
"Override initiated," Hayes announced, her eyes fixed on the small LCD screen of her diagnostic tool. "Mrs. Vance, your local server isn't experiencing an electrical fault. It was manually disconnected from the main breaker twenty-two minutes ago. That coincides precisely with the timestamp of the incoming distress signal."
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Claire’s facade cracked for a fraction of a second, her lower lip trembling before she managed to pull her expression back into a mask of injured innocence. "People make mistakes during remodeling projects, Detective. The wiring in this old house has been a nightmare since we bought it."
Hayes looked up from her device, her expression hardening. "This isn't old wiring, Claire. This is an advanced digital hard-kill. Someone inside pulled the plug on purpose. Now, I am going to ask you one last time: who else is currently inside this residence?"
