Chapter 3 - Fractured Records
It took me twenty-two minutes to cover forty feet.
By the time my fingers grasped the bottom of the wooden fence separating our properties, my fingernails were torn down to the quick, clogged with dirt and blood. My dress was ruined, a shredded rag of crimson and white.
The music from the party had shifted to light jazz. I could hear the pop of champagne corks, followed by scattered applause. Vanessa was likely giving her speech about how she had met Julian at a charity gala, pretending she was an angel who rescued stray animals instead of a sociopath who destroyed whatever she couldn't control.
"Arthur!" I tried to yell, but my voice came out as a weak, wheezing rasp. "Mr. Vance!"
Silence. Only the hum of the neighboring air conditioning unit.
I pulled myself up using the fence slats, dragging my dead weight until I could peer through a half-inch knot-hole in the cedar wood.
The yard on the other side was quiet, shaded by ancient weeping willows. The carriage house door was shut. There was no sign of movement.
My strength failed. My good leg gave out, and I slammed backward onto the turf, crying out as the impact jarred my shattered knee. The agony was so absolute that black spots swarmed my eyes, and my head struck the base of the fence.
I closed my eyes, resigning myself to the darkness.
*Thunk.*
The sound of a heavy wooden latch lifting cut through the haze.
A second later, a narrow access gate in the hedge—an old gate my father had boarded up ten years ago—groaned open. Dry wood splintered as a crowbar was wedged into the frame, forcing it back with brutal efficiency.
A pair of weathered work boots appeared in my line of sight.
"Emily?"
The voice wasn't seventy-two-year-old Arthur Vance. It was deeper, younger, with a steady, commanding timber.
I forced my eyes open.
Standing above me wasn't Arthur. It was a man in his early thirties with dark, untamed hair, wearing a worn denim shirt and grease-stained canvas trousers. His jaw was tight with stubble, his slate-gray eyes wide with shock as he took in the sight of me lying in the dirt, covered in blood.
"Liam," I whispered.
Liam Vance. Arthur’s nephew.
I hadn't seen him in nearly six years. He used to spend his summers fixing vintage motorcycles in Arthur’s workshop before he went off to the Naval Academy. The last thing I had heard through the neighborhood gossip grapevine was that Liam had left the military after an intelligence deployment and was working in digital forensics.
Liam didn't ask questions. He didn't tell me I was overreacting.
He dropped to his knees instantly, his hands moving with the practiced precision of a combat medic. He didn't touch the injured leg; instead, his fingers went straight to my carotid artery, checking my pulse, then gently tilting my chin to inspect my blown pupils.
"Signs of shock," he muttered to himself. Then his eyes locked onto mine. "Your knee is displaced. Did someone do this to you?"
"Vanessa," I gasped, tears leaking sideways into my hair. "She broke my cane. She pushed me. Dad... Dad kicked my phone away."
Liam’s jaw twitched. A dangerous, lethal stillness washed over his face. "I saw."
"You saw?"
"The monitor in my uncle's workshop," Liam said, his voice dropping an octave, deadly calm. "We tied the perimeter cameras into my local server three weeks ago after your father threatened to bulldoze the retaining wall. I was running a diagnostic when I saw the feed."
He reached behind his back, pulled out a small tactical radio, and hit the toggle. "Uncle Art. Call the county sheriff’s dispatch. Not local PD—the county sheriff. Tell them we have an aggravated assault and battery on private property, victim in severe medical distress. Request an ambulance directly to our driveway. Now."
"No," I pleaded, grabbing his wrist. "My dad... he said if I call an ambulance, he’ll cut off my medical fund. He said forty people will lie for Vanessa."
Liam looked down at my hand clinging to his forearm. His expression softened, but his eyes remained cold as iron.
"Emily, your father owns the municipal police chief. Everyone knows it. But he doesn't own the State Police, and he doesn't own the County Sheriff. And as for those forty witnesses?" Liam pointed up toward the black dome camera mounted on the carriage house roof. "That camera records in 4K at sixty frames per second. It has an optical zoom, and the directional mic array under the soffit picks up audio within a hundred-and-fifty-foot radius. It captured every single word your father whispered to your sister."
My heart skipped a beat. "The audio... he said..."
"'Make sure she doesn't call the police before the guests leave. If they investigate her injury again, they'll discover what happened the first time.'" Liam recited the sentence verbatim, his voice chillingly exact. "I heard it through my studio monitors five minutes ago."
Before I could process the reality of it, Liam slipped his arms beneath my shoulders and knees. With effortless strength, he lifted me from the gravel, keeping my broken leg completely immobilized against his chest.
"Hold on to my neck," he commanded gently.
I buried my face in his shoulder, shivering uncontrollably as he carried me through the narrow gate into the safety of his yard.
Behind us, through the hedge, I could hear my mother’s voice calling out across the patio.
"Emily? Emily, where did you crawl off to? Julian’s mother wants to see the gardens, get out from behind the shed!"
May you like
Liam didn't even turn his head. He kicked the wooden gate shut, dropped a heavy iron bolt into place, and carried me up the stone steps of the carriage house.
***
