Chapter 6 - Ghost in the Machine
Ethan’s biggest weakness had always been his absolute arrogance.
He fancied himself a financial genius, but every venture capital firm he had ever launched was funded entirely by my trust fund. He had built our smart home system three years ago, bragging to our neighbors about the automated biometric locks, the cloud-synced security feeds, and the state-of-the-art climate control.
What Ethan didn't know was that my college degree was in computer engineering. I had designed the backend architecture of our home server myself, routing the administrative master override through an encrypted partition he didn't even know existed.
At 2:00 PM on Wednesday afternoon, while Ethan was supposedly meeting with the funeral director to select a cheap pine casket for my cremation, I sat in the safehouse with Marcus and opened the command terminal.
"Camera three: Master Bedroom," Marcus called out, typing on his secondary terminal. "Diane just walked in."
On my screen, Diane Vance walked into my bedroom carrying two large industrial garbage bags. She began pulling my designer dresses, silk blouses, and coats out of the walk-in closet, shoving them violently into the bags like trash.
"Look at her," I muttered. "She couldn't even wait for the service."
"Give her a greeting," Marcus suggested.
I tapped four commands into the terminal.
In our Oak Brook master bedroom, the smart lights flickered once, twice, and then plunged the entire room into total darkness.
Diane froze on the camera feed. "Ethan?" she called out, her voice echoing in the empty room. "Ethan, did the power go out?"
Suddenly, the multi-room Sonos sound system hummed to life.
A voice recording began to play at moderate volume. It wasn't a spooky ghost effect; it was something far worse. It was a voice memo Ethan had recorded for me on our second anniversary, pulled directly from our synchronized family cloud storage:
*“You’re my whole world, Claire. Everything I have belongs to you. If anything ever happened to you, I’d lose my mind...”*
Diane gasped, dropping the garbage bag. The silk dresses spilled across the floor. "Ethan! Turn that off! That's not funny!"
I tapped another key.
The motorized blinds on all four master bedroom windows snapped shut simultaneously with a loud, mechanical thud.
The digital thermostat on the wall clicked. The temperature setting plunged instantly to 55 degrees.
Then, on the 75-inch smart television mounted above the fireplace, a single image flashed onto the screen:
A high-resolution photograph of the glass pitcher shattered on the hospital floor, covered in Jennifer’s fresh blood. Beneath the picture, two words were typed in bold red letters:
**WHO PUSHED ME?**
Diane shrieked. She stumbled backward, tripping over my dresses, and scrambled on her hands and knees toward the bedroom door. She wrenched the handle open and fled down the hallway, screaming Ethan’s name at the top of her lungs.
Marcus let out a low whistle. "Subtle, Vance. Very subtle."
"That wasn't for Diane," I said, leaning back in my chair, watching the empty room on the camera. "That was for Jennifer."
"Explain."
"Diane is a narcissist, but she's also superstitious and cowardly," I explained. "The first person she's going to accuse of playing sick practical jokes with the smart house isn't a ghost. She's going to accuse the bitter, angry mistress who just demanded six hundred thousand dollars and who happens to have lived in a modern smart home for two years."
Right on cue, fifteen minutes later, Ethan burst into the house, followed by a hysterical Diane. Ethan immediately pulled out his phone, his face red with rage, and dialed a number.
Marcus put the audio intercept on speaker.
*“Did you do this?!”* Ethan screamed the second Jennifer answered.
*“Do what? What the hell are you screaming about?”* Jennifer barked back.
*“Someone hacked the house server! Claire’s voice was playing on the speakers, and a photo of your bloody face at the hospital was blasted across our bedroom TV! Was this your sick way of extorting me?!”*
*“Are you insane?!”* Jennifer screamed back. *“I'm at my apartment packing my bags! Why would I hack your stupid house?! Ethan, if someone has photos from that hospital room, we are in serious trouble! What if Claire had someone watching her?!”*
*“Nobody was watching her!”* Ethan roared. *“She’s dead in the county morgue! But if you're trying to shake me down for more money before the insurance clears, Jennifer, I swear to God I will cut you out entirely!”*
*“You touch one dime of my cut,”* Jennifer replied, her voice dropping into a deadly, vicious whisper, *“and I send the receipt for the thallium sulphate directly to the State Police. Try me, Ethan.”*
The line went dead.
I looked up at Marcus.
"She has receipts," I said softly.
May you like
Marcus was already grabbing his coat. "Then I think it's time I pay Ms. Hayes's apartment a quiet visit."
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