Chapter 10 - The Second Frame
David searched the apartment.
No intruder remained inside.
The lock on Sophie’s window had been forced from the outside.
We were twelve floors above the street.
Someone had reached the balcony from a neighboring unit.
The phone rested on Sophie’s pillow like a message.
Or another trap.
Detective Ruiz arrived with a forensic team.
“No one touches it,” she ordered.
Sophie stood behind me, shaking.
“He put it in my room again.”
“I know.”
“Are people going to think I stole it?”
“No.”
“What if the camera doesn’t show this time?”
I knelt in front of her.
“Then they’ll believe me because I believe you.”
Ruiz photographed the device.
The serial number matched Preston’s phone.
But the police had already returned the original phone to him after processing it.
That meant he had personally brought it to the apartment or sent someone he trusted.
A technician examined the device.
“There’s something strange.”
“What?” Ruiz asked.
“The phone is recording.”
Every face in the room turned toward the pillow.
The technician placed it inside a signal-blocking bag.
“It may have been streaming audio remotely.”
David checked the neighboring apartment.
The tenant had left for Europe two days earlier.
Building footage showed a maintenance worker entering with a toolbox.
The company had no record of sending anyone.
By sunrise, police identified the man.
His name was Owen Rusk.
He worked as a private investigator for Whitmore Hospitality.
He was also the man who had photographed Sophie through the hospital door.
Ruiz issued a warrant.
Rusk was arrested at a motel near O’Hare Airport.
Inside his room, officers found lock picks, hospital access badges, copies of my medical records, and photographs of Sophie taken over the previous six months.
There were pictures outside her school.
Pictures at the playground.
Pictures through the windows of our home.
Preston had not created this plan at the wedding.
He had been studying my daughter for months.
Rusk initially refused to talk.
Then police showed him the assault footage.
His attorney requested a deal within the hour.
Rusk admitted that Preston hired him to document moments when I appeared “unstable.”
He had followed us to grocery stores, parent-teacher meetings, and medical appointments.
He had never found anything useful.
So Preston told him they would create an incident instead.
Rusk also revealed where Mr. Grayson had gone.
The security director was hiding in one of my father’s private lake houses.
Officers reached the property shortly before noon.
The house was empty.
A fire burned in the stone fireplace.
Inside the ashes, they found fragments of paper from the loyalty ledger.
But one page had survived.
May you like
It listed a payment made to Judge Harold Bennett.
The same judge assigned to hear Preston’s emergency petition against me.
