The Missing Six Minutes
Chapter 05 - The Missing Six Minutes
The grand-hall footage contained a six-minute gap from the night Clara disappeared.
Not a digital deletion.
Someone had physically removed a section of magnetic tape.
Marcus found the old reel inside a sealed room behind the library.
The cut edges were clean.
Only a person familiar with Clara’s system could remove footage without triggering the backup.
Evelyn touched the silver ring.
“My mother might have cut it herself.”
The missing segment began at 11:42 p.m. and ended at 11:48.
Before the gap, Clara entered the hall carrying a black case.
After the gap, Victor Vale walked out wearing blood on his white cuff.
No body appeared.
No police report mentioned an injury.
Julian searched his grandfather’s handwritten journals.
Samuel had written one sentence beside the date:
CLARA LIVES IF VICTOR BELIEVES SHE DOES NOT.
Samuel may have helped Clara disappear.
A storage account connected to the estate still paid monthly rent for a private room at Saint Agnes Recovery Center.
The patient was listed as Claire Reed.
Evelyn and Ortiz traveled there under court order.
The director said Claire Reed had died three years earlier.
Evelyn requested the body record.
There was none.
Only a transfer form signed by Victor Vale.
Destination:
ALBRIGHT LAKE HOUSE.
The lake house had been abandoned since Samuel’s death.
It sat beyond the northern woods, inaccessible from the main road.
Julian remembered a service tunnel connecting it to the mansion’s pool room.
The wall panel Serena tried to destroy controlled that tunnel.
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She had not been running away.
She had been trying to seal the route before police discovered who was hidden at the other end.
