Chapter 7 - Nobody Believed the Little Girl|
By the fourth week of Camila's employment, Mia had become the most discussed person in the Curado household.
The little girl had no idea that her innocent observations were unsettling people who controlled millions of dollars.
She was concerned with entirely different matters.
Bubbles had developed an imaginary cough.
The cook had promised to make cupcakes.
And the two men who looked alike still hadn't agreed to sit down for a meal together.
At breakfast one morning, Mia announced that she wanted to make a birthday cake for the sad man.
Mrs. Alves nearly spilled the coffee.
“Sweetheart, we don't know when his birthday is.”
Mia looked confused.
“Same as Mr. Vincent.”
The cook laughed before catching Mrs. Alves's expression.
Camila bent toward her daughter.
“How do you know that?”
Mia shrugged.
“They have the same face.”
The simplicity of the answer made Camila smile despite herself.
Of course they would share a birthday.
The adults had become so occupied with hiding the truth that a child had noticed what should have been obvious.
Unfortunately, the household staff had begun repeating Mia's stories.
One gardener claimed she had seen Vincent walking near the cottage while he was attending a meeting in Boston.
A driver insisted that a man resembling the boss had crossed the western grounds after midnight.
Others dismissed the sightings as rumors invented by employees with too much time on their hands.
Julian Voss encouraged that explanation.
During a staff meeting, he described Mia's comments as harmless childhood confusion.
“Children that age mix reality with imagination,” he said pleasantly.
“We should avoid encouraging unnecessary speculation.”
Camila stood near the back of the room, listening.
Julian glanced directly at her.
“Particularly when it concerns the privacy of Mr. Curado's family.”
Afterward, Camila found a new notice attached to the staff bulletin board.
It stated that employees sharing confidential family information could face immediate dismissal.
Below the warning was another paragraph about the importance of conducting work without distractions.
Camila understood exactly whom it was intended to intimidate.
That afternoon, Mia was playing beside the kitchen window when she noticed Julian crossing the courtyard.
She watched him climb into the black SUV parked near the service entrance.
Then she frowned.
“Mommy, that's the bad bird car.”
Camila looked up from the vegetables she was chopping.
“What bird?”
“The crooked bird.”
Mia pointed toward the rear window.
A small silver emblem was attached beside the license plate.
It showed a stylized seabird with one wing bent downward.
Camila remembered seeing the same emblem on the vehicle near the western service road.
“Why do you call it bad?”
Mia squeezed Bubbles.
“The man in the garden said to stay away from it.”
Camila lowered her knife.
“Did Adrien tell you that?”
Mia nodded.
Camila felt irritation rise through her fear.
She had warned him to stay away from her daughter.
But Mia continued speaking.
“He said the bird car made somebody cry.”
When Camila contacted Desmond, she expected another evasive answer.
Instead, he asked her to come immediately to the security office.
She brought Mia, unwilling to leave her alone.
Desmond displayed a photograph of the SUV on his monitor.
“Is this the vehicle?”
Mia leaned forward.
“Bad bird.”
Desmond's expression tightened.
The silver emblem belonged to a private transport company that had recently received several subcontracting payments from Curado Shipping.
The contracts had been authorized through Julian's office.
Desmond had already identified discrepancies between the amounts billed and the vehicles actually used.
“What does that mean?” Camila asked.
“It means somebody's paying for transportation that may never have occurred.”
“Or paying people who don't want their names recorded.”
Desmond looked at her with new respect.
“That's also possible.”
He opened another screen and displayed the security footage from the night Jonah Reed disappeared.
The terminal camera had recorded Jonah entering a maintenance building shortly before midnight.
Then the screen went black.
Twenty-five minutes later, the image returned.
Jonah was gone.
Camila leaned closer.
“Couldn't the camera have malfunctioned?”
“It could have.”
Desmond enlarged an access report.
“But malfunctions don't usually require an administrator password.”
At the bottom was the identification number of the account used to disable the recording.
Camila recognized the employee designation.
It belonged to Julian Voss's office.
Before Desmond could explain further, Mia tugged Camila's sleeve.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“The sad man is outside.”
Camila turned toward the window.
Adrien stood near the garden wall, half hidden beneath the branches of an old cedar.
He wasn't looking toward the mansion.
He was watching the black SUV.
Desmond saw him too.
For a moment, the security chief looked as though he might rush outside.
Then he reached for his radio.
“Keep the western gate clear,” he ordered.
“Do not approach the man near the cedar.”
Camila turned back toward the monitor.
A new line of text had appeared beneath Jonah's missing footage.
Desmond was examining the system history.
His face hardened.
“Someone just tried to erase this file permanently.”
“Can they?”
“Not anymore.”
He removed a small storage drive from the console.
“I made a copy.”
At that moment, every monitor in the security office flickered.
The screens went dark for several seconds.
When the images returned, an unfamiliar message filled the central display.
Stop looking into Berth Six.
Beneath it was a second sentence.
Next time, the child disappears.
Camila pulled Mia against her so quickly that the little girl cried out in surprise.
May you like
Desmond reached for the emergency telephone.
And somewhere inside the mansion, Julian Voss was smiling at a message on his own phone.
