Chapter 3 - The Hidden Frequency
Three days later, I was discharged. Jared carried me into our mansion in the hills as if I were made of glass, placing me gently onto the velvet settee in the master bedroom.
"I have to head into the office for an emergency board meeting, my love," he said, pressing a warm kiss to my forehead. The scent of Courtney’s floral perfume clung faintly to his collar. "Nurse Clara will be here in twenty minutes with your medication. Don't move from this bed."
"I won't," I said obediently.
The moment his Mercedes pulled out of the driveway, I threw back the duvet. I didn't call for help. Instead, I walked down the grand staircase step by agonizing step, holding the handrail to keep from collapsing.
I headed straight for Jared’s private study in the West Wing—a room strictly off-limits to the household staff. Jared believed his biometrics and encrypted keypads kept his secrets safe, but he had forgotten that I was the one who designed the security architecture for the house when we built it.
I entered my master override code into the panel. The heavy mahogany door clicked open with a soft hiss.
My objective wasn't his computer; Jared was too paranoid to leave digital footprints on a home network. My target was the vintage grandfather clock in the corner—an antique gifted to Jared by Courtney’s father, a senior shareholder at Harlan Media, two years ago.
Two weeks before my surgery, when I first suspected Jared’s infidelity, I had hired a private counter-surveillance technician to sweep the house. He hadn't just found a bug; he had found an ultra-high-frequency audio relay concealed inside the clock’s pendulum cabinet.
Jared hadn't installed it to spy on me. Courtney had installed it to spy on him.
I opened the clock casing, pulled out the micro-SD card from the receiver, and plugged it into a portable reader attached to my phone.
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I hit play, expecting to hear business secrets or evidence of their affair to use in the divorce proceeding.
What spilled out of the speakers, however, made my blood turn to ice.
