Chapter 14 What Couldn’t Be Deleted
Sloane
I retreated to the guest wing, my heart still hammering against my ribs from our conversation in the office. I had assumed Cade’s sudden exit was just grief, that the mention of the night of the gala when his sister died had simply been too much for him to handle.
I felt a pang of guilt for bringing it up, but I couldn't just sit in the silence and wait for him to stop hurting. If I was going to help, I needed to be useful. I needed to find a trail that he couldn't see.
I decided to stop waiting for him to come tell me what to do next. I went to the small desk in the guest room and opened my laptop. I wasn't a computer genius, but I knew how the Hartford hotel systems worked. I had been using them for years as a consultant. I logged into the employee portal, my fingers tapping against the keys.
I needed to see the logs from the gala. If someone was going to hide something shady that night, it would be buried in the boring stuff like maintenance requests, vendor payments, or guest incident reports from the nights of the gala.
"Come on," I whispered, leaning in as the loading circle spun on the screen.
The system felt slow. Usually, I could pull up a report in seconds, but today the pages were lagging. I clicked on the 'Security Archives' for the Hartford Hotel. The screen flickered, then stayed white for a long time.
I frowned. Maybe the house internet was having trouble. I tried to refresh the page, but instead of the guest logs, a bright red bar appeared at the top of the browser.
Account Activity Under Review
My heart gave a sharp, uncomfortable thud against my ribs. I tried to click 'Back,' but the browser froze. Then, a small pop-up appeared in the corner of the screen. It was a standard corporate security notice. It said my login was being flagged for "unusual activity" and that an administrator had been notified.
I slammed the laptop shut. I didn't want to be on the network for another second.
I grabbed the computer and hurried down the hall to Cade’s office. I didn't knock; I just pushed the door open. Cade was standing behind his desk staring at his phone. He looked up, his expression guarded and dark, but the moment he saw the look on my face, his posture changed. He straightened up slowly.
"What happened?" he asked, his voice was stiff.
"I tried to get into the logs from my laptop," I said, setting the computer on his desk. "The system flagged me. Cade, it says my account is under review. Someone is looking at those files right now."
Cade leaned forward, looking at the frozen screen. He didn't look surprised, but his jaw tightened. He pulled the laptop toward him and tapped a few keys, but the lockout was solid.
"They got tipped on any search related to those dates," Cade said. He sounded tired, but his mind was clearly working fast. "If you try to go back in, someone will definitely suspect you're looking for something."
"If we can't get them digitally, we're stuck," I said, looking at the black screen. "Anything on the cloud can be deleted or changed before we ever see it."
I realized then that we were fighting a losing game on the computer. Whoever had set this up didn’t need to be a tech genius.They just needed access.If we kept poking at the digital files, we were just going to get caught.
I remembered the key to my grandmother's office that Jonathan had given me.
I leaned back on the chair and thought out loud.
“Could my grandmother have the physical files that dated that far back? I know she was keen on physical documentation, but that would be a whole lot of documentation”
"You think she has the records for the gala night?", Cade asked.
“It wouldn’t hurt to find out”, I said.
He looked at the time. It was past 2 in the afternoon. “Okay then”, he sighed. “Let’s find out”
The drive to the Hartford Manor was silent. I kept my hand on the brass key in my pocket, feeling every notch and groove. To any guard at the gate, we were just a grieving granddaughter and her fiancé coming to collect personal items. It was a perfect cover.
When we pulled up to the stone gates, the security guard recognized my face immediately. He tipped his hat and let us through without a single question. The driveway was long and lined with ancient oaks.
The house itself loomed ahead, a massive structure of grey stone and dark windows. It felt empty and cold without my grandmother.
We walked in through the massive front doors. Our footsteps echoed on the polished marble as we climbed the grand staircase. We reached my grandmother’s wing and entered her bedroom, a huge space, draped in heavy velvet. I didn't stop to look at her jewelry or the clothes still hanging in the wardrobe. I walked straight to the back of the walk-in closet. Tucked behind a row of heavy fur coats was a small, inconspicuous wooden door.
I slid the brass key into the lock. It turned with a satisfying click.
The office was small and smelled of cedar and old paper. Inside was a single desk, a green shaded lamp, and a massive shelf of files. Inside, the files were organized by year in thick, leather-bound folders. There were no digital labels, just her sharp, elegant handwriting on the tabs. Fortunately, there were the folders from two years back that we were looking for. We pulled it open and started looking.
But then Cade noticed a difference in the folders. He reached into the back of the safe and pulled out one that looked different from the rest. It was newer, the leather still stiff, but the papers inside were yellowed and worn. As we flipped it open, my stomach turned over.
These were the exact same files we had been looking at on my laptop earlier today and the same ones that I looked at after I left Cade’s office the first time. The ones that had seemed so boring and routine. But these physical copies were covered in my grandmother’s handwriting.
She had made notes in the margins. Next to a list of "Maintenance Staff" for the night of the Spring Gala, she had written: Not on payroll. Who authorized?
Next to a line item for a private security firm, she had underlined the cost and written: Triple the market rate. Blackmail or bribe?
I turned the page and stopped. There was a copy of the event schedule for the night Lily died. My grandmother had circled it in thick, red ink. I stared at the page, my vision blurring. My grandmother hadn't been oblivious. She hadn't been the frail old woman I or everyone thought she was.
"She knew," I whispered, the words catching in my throat. "She was watching the same patterns just like Lily was." The realization was a cold weight in my chest.
I looked at Cade, my face pale. The wasn't just about Lily anymore. It was about a woman who had tried to save her legacy and failed.
“She knew something wasn’t right,” I said, my voice unsteady. “Not enough to prove it. Just enough to be afraid. She was paying closer attention.,” I said, my voice trembling. “And then she was gone.”
“Just like Lily," Cade said behind me.