Chapter 5 - Voices in the Dark
The weeks following Scott's arrest were a slow, agonizing crawl through a nightmare made of paperwork, police interviews, and deep emotional scars.
Emily and I moved out of that house immediately, taking up residence in a quiet cottage two towns over, owned by my older sister, Rachel. The cottage sat near a dense pine forest, surrounded by tall fences and blooming wildflowers—a place that felt as far away from Scott’s dark secrets as humanly possible.
Yet, safety proved to be an illusion of the mind.
Emily barely spoke. When she did, it was in hushed whispers, constantly checking the corners of rooms or staring at closed doors as if expecting them to swing open. Bath time, once a simple daily routine, had become an ordeal of panic attacks and hyperventilation. I had to wash her with damp towels while she sat fully clothed on the bed, holding my hand until her skin turned pink from my reassuring strokes.
One evening, Dr. Evelyn Reed, a specialized child trauma psychologist, sat with us in Rachel’s sunlit living room.
"Emily," Dr. Reed said, placing a set of colored markers and a large sketchbook on the low table. "Can you draw me a picture of the bad games? You don't have to use words if you don't want to."
Emily picked up a dark black marker. With slow, hesitant strokes, she drew a large box. Inside the box, she drew two figures: a small girl and a tall man without a face. But what caught my eye—and made Dr. Reed pause—was what she drew outside the box.
She drew several smaller figures standing outside a window, watching.
"Who are those people, Emily?" Dr. Reed asked gently.
"The friends," Emily whispered, her eyes glued to the paper. "Daddy said if I didn't hold the papers still, the friends would come into my room at night while Mommy was sleeping."
A chill ran down my spine. Scott hadn't just been working alone. He was part of a larger network—a group of individuals purchasing access to confidential structural data and illicit recordings through an encrypted online ring.
That night, after Emily finally fell into a restless sleep, Detective Miller called my cell phone.
"Clara," Miller's voice was tense over the line. "We cracked the encryption on the flash drives we found in the safe."
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"What did you find?" I asked, gripping the counter.
"It's worse than we thought. Scott wasn't just storing local security data. He was acting as a primary node for a regional cyber-syndicate. And Clara... he had help from inside the department. That's how he knew we were coming that night."
