Most were marked C.
Two were marked P.
My name had no letter.
Only a question mark.
“What do the letters mean?” Brooke asked.
Julian looked at Ava.
“C means cooperative.”
Ava went pale.
“P?”
“Problem.”
“Who is marked problem?”
Julian pointed.
A man named Thomas Hale.
And Ava’s father.
Brooke covered her mouth.
“The dates,” Ava whispered.
Julian nodded.
“Those are the dates they died.”
Rain beat against the roof.
Downstairs, the old clock in the living room chimed once.
One in the morning.
Julian pointed toward the laptop.
“That list was inside a folder on the hotel computer. I photographed it before leaving.”
“Why not take the laptop?” I asked.
“Because this isn’t the same laptop.”
He lifted the silver machine and examined the bottom.
“The one at the hotel had a dent near the hinge.”
Ava stared at him.
“Then what is this?”
“Something someone wanted us to find here.”
At that moment, the laptop powered on by itself.
Nobody touched the keyboard.
The screen glowed pale blue.
A password box appeared, then vanished.
A video opened.
The image was grainy and dark.
It showed our living room.
Our house.
The camera angle came from somewhere above the fireplace.
The date stamp showed two weeks earlier.
Ava entered the room carrying groceries.
I followed behind her.
There was no sound.
We watched ourselves move through our own home, unaware.
The footage jumped forward.
Night.
I was asleep on the sofa.
Ava came downstairs and stood over me for almost a minute. She reached into her robe pocket, removed a small key, and unlocked the desk drawer by the window. She searched through my papers and photographed several pages with her phone.
Ava turned away from the screen.
“I was looking for the insurance policy.”
I ignored her.
The video jumped again.
Now Ava was not alone.
A man entered through the back door wearing a baseball cap, keeping his face turned from the camera. Ava handed him an envelope. He gave her the bottle I had found in the suitcase.
She laughed, then placed it on the kitchen counter.
The man pointed upstairs.
Ava shook her head.
He touched her shoulder.
She stepped away.
There was no kiss.
No embrace.
Nothing that looked romantic.
The evidence I had believed proved an affair had been a prop exchanged during a meeting.
The video continued.
Ava opened the suitcase and arranged the lingerie near the top. Then she placed the bottle beneath it, shifted both items twice, and closed the zipper halfway. She had not been hiding the objects from me.
She had been staging them for me.
Julian looked at her.
“You said you didn’t want Ryan to find them.”
Ava watched herself on the screen.
“I lied.”
The man in the cap handed her a second phone.
She tucked it into the suitcase lining.
Then he turned toward the hidden camera.
For one brief second, his face became visible.
Brooke screamed.
The man was their father.
Not a lookalike.
Not an old photograph.
Their father, alive and standing in my living room two weeks earlier.
Ava stumbled backward.
“No.”
Brooke gripped the bedframe.
“That’s impossible.”
Julian froze the image.
The date remained in the corner.
Their father had supposedly died eight years earlier.
I looked at the sisters.
Neither was pretending.
Ava moved closer to the screen, lips forming the word Dad without sound.
The video resumed.
The man removed his cap.
His face was older now, thinner, grayer, but unmistakable.
He looked directly into the hidden camera as if he knew it was there.
Then he lifted a sheet of paper.
Four words were written across it.
Ryan is not the target.
The video went black.
Brooke began to cry.
Ava stood motionless beside her.
Julian closed the laptop, but the screen immediately lit again.
A countdown appeared.
Ten minutes.
No explanation.
Just numbers dropping one second at a time.
09:59.
09:58.
“What happens when it reaches zero?” Brooke asked.
Julian pulled the power cord.
The countdown continued.
He held down the power button.
Nothing changed.
09:44.
“We need to get it out of the house,” he said.
I took the laptop from him.
“Or that’s exactly what they want.”
Ava looked at me.
“The paper said you weren’t the target.”
“Then who was?”
All of us turned toward her.
She shook her head.
“No.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed.
“The suitcase was staged for Ryan. The confession used his name. The hotel room was prepared for him.”
“But the video says he isn’t the target,” Brooke said.
Julian looked at Ava.
“Maybe he’s the bait.”
Ava sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.
“My father knew I would follow the plan if Ryan was threatened.”
Brooke stared at her.
“You knew Dad was alive?”
“No.”
“You spoke to him in this house.”
“I thought he was someone else.”
“How could you not recognize your own father?”
“He wore a different face.”
Brooke looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
Ava pointed at the screen.
“That is not the man who came here.”
Julian reopened the laptop and dragged the video backward.
He froze the frame before the man removed his cap.
Now that Ava had said it, the difference became visible.
The jaw was wrong.
The nose broader.
The facial movements a little too smooth.
“Deepfake,” Julian whispered.
Brooke shook her head.
“But why?”
“To make us believe her father is alive,” I said.
Ava looked at me.
“Or to make us dismiss the real possibility as fake.”
The countdown continued.
07:38.
A sound came from downstairs.
The back door opened.
Julian moved first, pulling a small folding knife from his pocket as he headed into the hallway. I followed with the laptop in my hands. Ava and Brooke came behind us.
We reached the staircase.
The living room below appeared empty.
The front door was still locked.
The back door stood open several inches.
Cold air moved through the house.
Julian descended slowly.
I followed him into the kitchen.
Mud marked the tile near the entrance.
One set of footprints led inside.
None led out.
A white envelope rested on the counter.
My name was written across it in the same imitation of my handwriting.
Julian opened the pantry.
Empty.
I checked the laundry room.
Nothing.
Ava and Brooke came down together.
The laptop countdown reached 06:02.
Ava saw the envelope.
“Don’t touch it.”
“It’s already here,” I said.