Chapter 7: The Second Video
The second video was two minutes and seventeen seconds long.
I watched it in the hospital bathroom with the door locked and the tap running.
It had been recorded three days before the incident.
In Thatcher's kitchen.
Sutton and Thatcher were sitting at the table with coffee cups between them, and neither of them knew the phone was still recording.
Thatcher had clearly started filming something else — a recipe, a view from the window, something ordinary — and forgotten to stop.
What the camera captured was four minutes into a private conversation that had already been happening.
"—not going to work if the device is just sitting there beeping the whole time," Sutton was saying.
She had a notepad on the table.
An actual notepad, with a pen.
"The audience needs to see her struggling a little.
If she looks fine, the story doesn't land."
Thatcher's face was partly in frame.
"She's not going to struggle on cue, Sutton."
"She doesn't have to do it on cue.
She just needs to be without the device for long enough that the breathing gets visible.
Thirty seconds.
A minute.
You film it.
I'll edit around the rest."
"And if something actually goes wrong?"
"Nothing will go wrong.
We've done this before and she was fine every time."
Thatcher picked up his coffee cup.
"She's been worse lately," he said.
"Her last appointment — the doctor said her baseline has dropped."
"Then it'll look more real, won't it."
A silence.
"Sutton."
"What?
I'm not saying anything is going to happen to her.
I'm saying that if we're going to use this story, it needs to be worth using.
Fourteen months of small moments and nothing clips well enough to matter.
This time I need something that makes people feel something."
Thatcher didn't respond.
"You want to keep the channel viable or not?" Sutton said.
"Because if the channel dies, so does the income.
And I know what you owe on this house, Thatcher.
I know exactly what you owe."
The video ended there.
I sat on the edge of the bathtub with my phone in both hands.
They had planned it.
Not improvised.
Not a moment of carelessness that spiraled.
They had sat at a kitchen table three days before and planned to remove Merritt's device long enough to capture footage of her struggling, knowing her baseline had dropped, knowing the risk — and they had decided the content was worth more than the danger.
I forwarded the video to Vaughn.
Then I called him directly.
He answered on the first ring.
"Vaughn.
Check your messages right now."
I heard him opening the file.
Then silence.
A very long silence.
"Where did this come from?"
"The shared cloud account.
He still hasn't changed the settings."
More silence.
"Winslow." His voice had a quality I hadn't heard from him before.
Not urgency exactly.
Something closer to controlled disbelief.
"This is not a civil matter.
This is not a negligence matter.
What I am looking at is evidence of premeditated harm to a vulnerable person."
"I know."
"I need to call my colleague right now.
The one handling the criminal side.
This goes to her first."
"Call her."
"Are you all right?"
I looked at the bathroom tiles.
White.
Plain.
Hospital-adjacent.
"I will be," I said.
"Make the call."
I washed my face, dried it, and walked back to Merritt's room.
She was sitting up slightly, watching the door.
When I came in, she looked at my face and her expression shifted.
She picked up the board.
*Mom.
What is it?*
I sat down in the chair beside her.
I took her hand.
"I need to tell you something," I said.
"And I need you to hear it from me before it comes from anywhere else."
She held very still.
"Your father and your aunt had a conversation three days ago," I said.
"It was recorded by accident.
I have it."
She didn't write anything.
She just looked at me.
"What happened to you on Sunday was not an accident," I said.
"It was planned."
Merritt's hand tightened around mine.
May you like
The monitor beside her bed registered her heart rate climbing.
I held on.
