Page 148 of I Replaced His Husband
"I need to know if you sent that shooter. Did you hire someone to watch our house, to intervene if anything went down?"
He let out a sigh.
"I wish I could tell you that was our idea, but no. We were naive. We thought the Dawson family had learned their lesson and wouldn’t stoop that low."
"I heard from Adam that your brother was in the military. Maybe he knew someone?"
"Garry doesn’t even live in the States anymore. He moved to Paris with his new husband a year ago. I wouldn’t drag him into this. It wasn’t us, sorry to disappoint you. But we do have our own theories."
I sighed. More theories?
I’d heard so many already.
Still, I asked, "What kind of theories?"
"Maurice had a close relationship with his martial arts instructor. He used to say that if he ever needed extra protection for Kay, that’s the guy he’d call."
"Did this instructor ever meet Kay or Adam?"
"He saw Kay at some of Maurice’s Muay Thai competitions, but I don’t think they ever spoke. And Adam never went to those events. He wasn’t into combat sports."
"I didn’t even know Maurice competed," I murmured, a little embarrassed. Maybe I should’ve taken up a martial art myself. Maurice had embraced his role in protecting Kay so seriously…
"Yeah, his instructor, Tony Aldo, trained him for years. Maurice trusted him. The guy was… a character. Lived in a cabin in the woods, hunted his own food, sometimes took Maurice along. Never really understood that whole lifestyle."
I rubbed my forehead. "Are you sure this instructor never met Adam? Didn’t even know him?"
"I’m not sure why you’re asking, but I doubt it. Adam had his own circle of friends, and Kay and Maurice mostly kept to themselves. Adam’s kind of a homebody. I don’t think the guy would’ve even recognized him or remembered his name."
A headache was creeping in.
I felt like I was chasing smoke. Still, I had this gut feeling that whoever made that call during the attackknew Adam.
In a moment of intense emotions, he mentioned only his first name. That might mean he barely knew him and couldn’t recall the last name, but something about the way he said it, like he knew exactly who he meant, made me almost certain. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt it in my bones.
Whoever it was, hewasn’ta stranger.
The days that followed were restless.
Something kept gnawing at me, making it hard to sleep. I'd lie there, tossing and turning, with a strange feeling of being watched, a sense of an eerie presence in the house.
Sometimes the hair on my neck would stand up when I heard faint noises. I'd lie there paralyzed, afraid to move, fearing the worst. And no, I didn't think the threat was physical because I would've gotten up without hesitation. In my confusion and muddled state, I believed the threat was…paranormal.
One day, I clearly heard it, very faint, almost imperceptible rustling. When I concentrated, I thought I could hear someone's heartbeat.
Not wanting to believe that I was going crazy, suspecting that supernatural forces were at work, I decided that I couldn't take it anymore.
One day, while Kay was napping, I went to Marco's office, where the small server managing the camera system was located.
I started reviewing the night footage, occasionally smacking my head, trying to shake off my crazy ideas.
That's insane, Rain!And indeed, nothing seemed suspicious. The motion sensors showed no movement; the cameras captured only an empty yard.
But as I examined the footage and logs, something caught my eye. There was a discrepancy in the dates of the files. Sometimes there were twenty-minute or even half-hour gaps. It seemed off.
I analyzed the segments and noticed that the camera recorded for 30 minutes, then saved the files in a folder with a timestamp. But I remembered what the technician told us: the recordings also go to a backup archive. They were uploaded to the cloud in real time, and the originals were saved on the drive with a proper date stamp.
I checked who might have access to the folder and realized that Marco had set the admin password to Kay’s birthdate. On the other hand, the cloud access password was still the default one the technician had written down for us on a slip of paper. I opened a drawer and nervously rummaged through it but found nothing. Then, on impulse, I lifted the laptop and, with a sigh of relief, saw that Marco or Adam had taped the slip to the bottom of the laptop. Not the safest or smartest place, but it worked in my favor. I entered the password and logged into the cloud. Sure enough, some files were… much longer. There were significant differences in the sizes of the camera recordings, and my heart started racing.
