Chapter 14 - The Confession
The silence in the garden stretched, heavy and dangerous. I let it hang there, letting the sheer weight of his own guilt pull the words from his throat. Daniel was a man who always needed to be the smartest person in the room. He couldn't stand being outmaneuvered by the woman he considered merely a "technician."
He leaned across the table, his face twisted with sudden, violent rage. He lowered his voice to a harsh, venomous whisper, unaware that the high-gain microphone on my collar was picking up every single syllable perfectly.
"You should have destroyed that watch," he hissed, his eyes burning with hatred.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, but my face remained a mask of stone. "You knew they were inside the house," I pushed, driving the final nail into his coffin. "You turned off the carbon monoxide alarms manually."
His eyes hardened into dark, soulless pits. The facade of the grieving father was completely gone, leaving only the monster underneath.
"They weren’t supposed to wake up," Daniel snarled, confirming the premeditated murder of his own twins in one horrifying sentence. "You were supposed to lose custody in the divorce, not start digging through the server logs. The gas leak was meant to make you look negligent so I could take the company cleanly. Those stupid, overpriced alarms you built ruined everything."
Behind the garden wall, the two detectives heard enough. The lead detective gave the signal.
Daniel stood up abruptly, his anger boiling over. He knocked his iron chair backward onto the grass, stepping aggressively toward me with his fists clenched.
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"You're going to keep your mouth shut," he threatened, raising his hand.
Then, impossibly, his phone rang.
