The man pointed upstairs.
Ava shook her head.
He touched her shoulder.
She stepped away.
There was no kiss.
No embrace.
Nothing that looked romantic.
The evidence I had believed proved an affair had been a prop exchanged during a meeting.
The video continued.
Ava opened the suitcase and arranged the lingerie near the top. Then she placed the bottle beneath it, shifted both items twice, and closed the zipper halfway. She had not been hiding the objects from me.
She had been staging them for me.
Julian looked at her.
“You said you didn’t want Ryan to find them.”
Ava watched herself on the screen.
“I lied.”
The man in the cap handed her a second phone.
She tucked it into the suitcase lining.
Then he turned toward the hidden camera.
For one brief second, his face became visible.
Brooke screamed.
The man was their father.
Not a lookalike.
Not an old photograph.
Their father, alive and standing in my living room two weeks earlier.
Ava stumbled backward.
“No.”
Brooke gripped the bedframe.
“That’s impossible.”
Julian froze the image.
The date remained in the corner.
Their father had supposedly died eight years earlier.
I looked at the sisters.
Neither was pretending.
Ava moved closer to the screen, lips forming the word Dad without sound.
The video resumed.
The man removed his cap.
His face was older now, thinner, grayer, but unmistakable.
He looked directly into the hidden camera as if he knew it was there.
Then he lifted a sheet of paper.
Four words were written across it.
Ryan is not the target.
The video went black.
Brooke began to cry.
Ava stood motionless beside her.
Julian closed the laptop, but the screen immediately lit again.
A countdown appeared.
Ten minutes.
No explanation.
Just numbers dropping one second at a time.
09:59.
09:58.
“What happens when it reaches zero?” Brooke asked.
Julian pulled the power cord.
The countdown continued.
He held down the power button.
Nothing changed.
09:44.
“We need to get it out of the house,” he said.
I took the laptop from him.
“Or that’s exactly what they want.”
Ava looked at me.
“The paper said you weren’t the target.”
“Then who was?”
All of us turned toward her.
She shook her head.
“No.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed.
“The suitcase was staged for Ryan. The confession used his name. The hotel room was prepared for him.”
“But the video says he isn’t the target,” Brooke said.
Julian looked at Ava.
“Maybe he’s the bait.”
Ava sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.
“My father knew I would follow the plan if Ryan was threatened.”
Brooke stared at her.
“You knew Dad was alive?”
“No.”
“You spoke to him in this house.”
“I thought he was someone else.”
“How could you not recognize your own father?”
“He wore a different face.”
Brooke looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
Ava pointed at the screen.
“That is not the man who came here.”