From my phone.
I lowered Lily onto the chair beside me because my knees no longer felt reliable.
Marcus continued carefully. His security team had traced the transmission to the estate network and to a device registered under the number I had given Human Resources. The information had been sent through an encrypted messaging application that was later deleted.
“That was why you were in here,” I said.
He nodded.
“You were going to fire me.”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt, even though I had expected it.
Marcus looked back at the screen. “I was going to have security bring you in after breakfast. I thought the evidence was clear.”
Lily swung one bare foot beneath the chair.
I stared at Vanessa holding my phone.
“Apparently it wasn’t.”
“No,” Marcus said. “It wasn’t.”
For several seconds the only sound in the room came from the security system’s cooling fan.
Then Marcus crouched in front of Lily.
“You did something important,” he told her.
Lily hugged Mr. Bun. “I found TV.”
His mouth moved like he almost smiled.
“You found something on the TV.”
She nodded solemnly.
I wanted to apologize again for her being in the forbidden room, but the words felt ridiculous now. My five-year-old had wandered where she should not have gone and found the one image that kept me from being blamed for something I did not do.
Marcus stood.
“I need to secure the phone if we can find it,” he said. “Do you use a passcode?”
“Yes.”
“Could Vanessa know it?”
I almost said no.
Then I remembered two weeks earlier, when Lily had been watching cartoons on my phone in the kitchen and Vanessa stood nearby while I unlocked it. Four digits. My daughter’s birthday.
“She could have seen me enter it.”
Marcus closed his eyes briefly.
