Chapter 67 THE FOOTAGE
POV: CAMERON
The surveillance room was cold.
It was always cold. On purpose. His dad said precision needed stillness, and stillness needed cold. Cameron grew up accepting that the same way he accepted everything Derek Hayes taught him—not as a choice, but as a fact of life.
The monitors bathed the room in pale blue light.
Cameron stood in front of the biggest screen and stared at Vickey Harris’s face.
The footage was clean. Always was. The camera in the vent above the supply closet had been installed eighteen months ago during a routine maintenance window. It was angled to cover the whole room, set to motion-activate. He knew because he’d helped set it up. He’d been part of most of the setups.
He looked at her face on the screen.
The way she looked between moments. That kind of attention where you focus on what’s right in front of you instead of trying to control it. He’d been trained to fake that look—the looking, the attention, the exact way to make someone feel seen. He knew what it looked like from the outside because he was taught to create it.
But he didn’t know what it looked like from the inside until he saw her.
One second.
That was all he let himself have.
One second of looking at the girl who kissed him back like she’d decided to stop being scared of wanting things. And realizing what he’d just done to that decision.
Then Derek stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the room.
“Impressive,” his father said. He said it like everything he said—an evaluation, not a compliment. Derek Hayes didn’t do compliments. Cameron had spent seventeen years learning the difference.
Derek held out a flash drive between two fingers, like he wanted Cameron to feel its weight before touching it.
Cameron took it.
It felt heavier than a drive that size should. He knew that was his mind playing tricks. Knowing that didn’t make it feel lighter.
“This goes where?” Cameron asked.
“Wherever it needs to go,” Derek said. “Unless Miss Harris decides to cooperate with how Thornfield works.” He looked back at the screen, at Vickey’s face, with the cold expression of someone looking at inventory, not a person. “Her scholarship review is set for spring. That review is flexible.”
Cameron turned the drive over in his hand.
“And Annabelle Wilson,” Derek said. His voice didn’t change when he said the name. That was his dad—nothing changed, everything came out in the same flat tone. “Miss Harris will make sure Ms. Wilson’s investigations are redirected. When the time comes. She’ll know what we need.”
“She’ll agree,” Cameron said without thinking. Like gospel. Like something he’d been saying so long it didn’t need thought anymore.
Derek looked at him.
Not like a father looking at his son, but like someone checking a machine for the right parts.
“Of course she will,” Derek said. “They always do.”
He reached past Cameron and pressed a key on the console. The footage zoomed in.
Vickey’s face filled the screen.
The moment she decided.
Cameron watched and said nothing. The ash taste came in his mouth again—the one that showed up when a calculation finished and the cost of it hit him.
“Tonight,” Derek said, already heading for the door. “The ruins. She’ll be there.”
He left without closing the door.
Cameron stood in the cold room, the drive in his hand, Vickey’s face on the screen, and the ash in his mouth. He didn’t move for a long moment.
Then he put the drive in his pocket.
Lit a cigarette with hands that were steady because they always were steady. That steadiness was the one thing he was taught to value most about himself.
He walked out.
The drive was in his pocket.
The ruins were in an hour.
He went.