It wasn’t difficult to fake looking ill as we left the party. My stomach was twisted in knots from the adrenaline and the emotional rollercoaster I’d been on, and I leaned on Vance for support as we waited for the car to pull up.
We didn’t talk on the short drive back to his house. We were both too deep in our thoughts. He was probably wondering what was on the flash drive, but all I could see was the gold face of my father’s watch as I’d struggled to put it back in Lambert’s safe.
There was an uneasy feeling in the air as we got out of the car and went up the front steps of his family’s mansion. The wind seemed cold and vicious as it rippled across my strapless dress and bare skin, like it knew we’d taken something we shouldn’t.
Our feet carried us through the house, up the grand staircase, and into his bedroom. We sat together on the couch with his MacBook perched on the coffee table in front of us, and the copy of Lambert’s flash drive clenched in Vance’s fist.
“Ready?” he asked.
I’d been ready for ten long years to see what my father had been after, and now the moment was finally here. “Yes.”
He plugged it into the port, gave it a moment to recognize the device, and then double-clicked. The window opened to display a few folders. One was titled Barlowe, and another Stockwell, but it was the Hale folder in the middle that Vance navigated the cursor to and clicked open.
It held a single .mov file, and the name on it was a random series of numbers. I couldn’t tell anything from the dark thumbnail, and it didn’t seem like he could either, judging by his confused look.
He didn’t ask for privacy before clicking on it. Perhaps he felt I’d earned the right to see everything on the drive since I’d been the one to find it, or maybe he thought I’d understand it was a long time ago, and he didn’t want me to think he was hiding secrets.
The video application launched, the screen filled with the black dialogue box, and then the footage began to roll.
The Hales’ formal dining room was naturally dark because it was paneled in wood, but in this video, it was lit only by the candles in the five-arm candelabras that rested on the long, elegant table.
A woman in a corseted red ballgown sat in a chair with her back to the camera, and she was surrounded by tuxedoed men on either side. No one seemed to be aware of the camera, and there was a green leaf at the edge of the frame, like it had been hidden inside a flower arrangement.
“What is this?” I asked.
He stared at the screen with utter confusion. “I don’t know.”
Some of the men moved, blocking our view with their backs, but when they shifted out of the way, the woman was on her feet and turned to look up at the guy closest to her. I blinked, recognizing her even though she was younger and didn’t have her pretty green hair.
Marist Hale held a glass of champagne, but it went untouched as the man looming over her spoke. I recognized him too. Vance’s father looked more like his sons back before his hair had begun to gray.
As Macalister appeared to speak, nothing came through the laptop’s speakers. Vance pressed a key repeatedly to turn up the volume, but it didn’t make a difference.
“I don’t think the camera captured sound,” I said.
We watched in silence as Macalister continued to talk and Marist said nothing. Her eyes grew larger, though. Why was he lecturing her in front of all these other men?
Beside me, Vance said it like he was talking to himself. “I don’t understand.”
I didn’t either. He wasn’t on screen, nor was Alice Hale, and this clearly wasn’t a sex tape—
Royce appeared behind Marist and worked to undo the strings at the back of her corset. He loosened them, sliding his hands inside her dress as Macalister took the glass of champagne from her and set it aside on the table.
“What the fuck?” I gasped.
She’d had her hands pressed to the front of her corset, holding it in place, so when she let go, the entire dress peeled down her body. It left her wearing only a pair of skimpy black panties and the layers of red fabric puddled at her feet.
Vance bolted up off the couch, but his horrified gaze was glued to the screen like he was witnessing a train wreck. On screen, his father held out a hand to Marist, which she reluctantly took, and let him lead her to the end of the table.
That was enough for Vance. He’d seen his sister-in-law basically naked, and now knew his father had too, and the information filled him with a desire to escape. His feet pounded on the floor as he began to flee, only to abruptly halt a few steps away.