Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Garden
The digital clock on the dashboard of Lucas’s sedan read 1:15 AM as he pulled back into the quiet, tree-lined street of Montchat. The neighborhood was dead silent, shrouded in a heavy autumn mist that rolled in from the Rhône River. Most of the houses were pitch black, their occupants fast asleep, oblivious to the quiet domestic earthquake that had shattered the Perrot household.
Lucas left his headlights off as he coasted to a stop near his driveway. He looked across the dividing hedge toward Madame Leroy’s property. Her house was dark, save for a faint, amber glow flickering behind the lace curtains of her ground-floor study.
He slipped out of the car, moving with the stealth of a man on a clandestine mission. The hospital had assured him that Chloé was resting comfortably under sedation and police guard, but the warning from the old neighbor echoed relentlessly in his mind: She isn't alone in this.
Who else was involved? Sabrina’s mother, Grandma Lorraine? One of Sabrina’s affluent socialite friends from the local wine-tasting club? Or someone Lucas had never even suspected?
He crept along the gravel path of Madame Leroy’s side garden, his eyes scanning the shadows. The damp autumn air smelled of rotting leaves and damp earth. Reaching the side gate, he knelt down beside the weathered brick wall. His fingers searched along the base of the stone pillar until they brushed against a loose paving flag. Lifting it gently, he felt around in the dark soil underneath.
His fingers grazed a small, cold object: a standard black USB flash drive wrapped in a piece of plastic wrap.
He snatched it, tucked it securely into his inner coat pocket, and rose to his feet. Just as he turned to head back to his car, a sudden click of a latch echoed from the direction of his own backyard.
Lucas froze, pressing his back flat against the ivy-covered brick wall of Madame Leroy’s house.
Through the sparse branches of the privet hedge, he could see the silhouette of the back door of his own home opening. A slender figure stepped out onto the patio, illuminated briefly by the motion-sensor porch light. It wasn't Sabrina. It was a man—tall, wearing a dark trench coat, his collar turned up against the chill. He walked with a familiar, confident stride, holding a leather briefcase in one hand.
Lucas squinted through the mist, trying to bring the man’s face into focus. As the man turned to lock the back door with a spare key—a spare key that only family members possessed—the porch light caught his profile.
It was Marc Vanes.
Marc was not just an acquaintance; he was Sabrina’s cousin, a high-ranking corporate attorney who frequently handled the Perrot family’s legal and financial affairs. More than that, Marc was the man Lucas had trusted like a brother, the very person Lucas had invited over for Sunday dinners, birthdays, and holiday barbecues.
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What was Marc doing letting himself into Lucas’s house at one o'clock in the morning, while Sabrina was presumably asleep upstairs and their daughter was hospitalized?
Lucas’s blood ran cold. The pieces of a terrifying puzzle began slamming together in his mind: Sabrina’s sudden coldness over the past year, the unexplained financial withdrawals from their joint business accounts, the late-night business trips to Lyon that Marc had conveniently encouraged and scheduled, and now... physical abuse directed at a seven-year-old child who might have accidentally witnessed something she wasn't supposed to see.
