Eight Months Pregnant, My Husband Locked Me in a Freezing Cabin for His Ex on Christmas Eve novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Deleted Footage

They let me hold June for the first time that afternoon.

The nurse pulled a recliner up beside the incubator and unzipped my shirt.

Then she lifted my daughter out of the clear box, tubes and all, and laid her bare against my skin.

June weighed just over four pounds, and she smelled like warm milk and soap.

Her fist closed on a fold of my shirt.

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Eli stood in the doorway with his back to us, guarding it, and I knew he was doing it so I could cry.

When the nurse left, Rhonda slipped in with a laptop under her arm.

"Don't move," she said. "I'm not going to ask you to look at anything for a minute."

"What is it?"

"The cloud company called back."

I shifted June higher on my chest.

"I told them what you told me," Rhonda said. "That you created the account in 2022. That you paid the setup, and your name is on the original contract. That the admin login deleted every clip after eight forty-one on Christmas Eve."

"And?"

"They keep deleted clips for seven days in cold storage. They won't restore them for the admin, because Joyce deleted them. But the account's original owner can ask."

"I'm the original owner."

"They asked me to put you on the phone."

So I did it with June asleep on me.

I said my name and the account number I had typed a hundred times, and the last four digits of the card.

I said, "Please restore everything from the doorbell camera on Larch Ridge. From eight forty-one on the twenty-fourth to six in the morning on the twenty-fifth."

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