Briggs did not ask me if I was sure.
Good investigators never insult a witness with questions like that.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“North stairwell. Basement landing. Bring a doctor quietly.”
His silence sharpened. “Did someone hurt you?”
“My stepdaughter just tried to finish what her father started.”
I heard him exhale once. “Stay conscious, Mrs. Vale.”
“Working on it.”
By the time the nurses found me, I had hidden the phone again and arranged my face into shock. Madison had taught me the value of performance. My husband, Daniel, had perfected it.
He arrived twenty minutes later, breathless, handsome, devastated for the cameras no one had brought.
“My God, Victoria.” He grabbed my uninjured hand. “Who let this happen?”
Behind him, Madison stood with flushed cheeks and lipstick the color of fresh blood. She held a takeout box.
For me, perhaps. Or as a trophy.
“I just went to get dinner,” she said sweetly. “Poor thing must have tried walking alone.”
Daniel squeezed my fingers too hard. A warning.
I looked at him and let my eyelids flutter. Weak. Confused. Harmless.
“I slipped,” I whispered.
Madison’s smile bloomed.
Daniel kissed my forehead. “Rest, darling. We’ll handle everything.”
Everything meant the insurance claim. The house had been insured for three million dollars after Daniel convinced me to “protect our future.” He did not know I had refused to sign the amended beneficiary papers his lawyer slipped into the hospital folder. He did not know my attorney had already received copies.
And he certainly did not know my lake house had security cameras hidden inside the brass porch lights.
Daniel had always mocked my caution.
“You and your little spy gadgets,” he used to laugh. “This isn’t one of your fraud cases.”
No. It was simpler.
A vain man with debt. A cruel daughter with expensive tastes. A wife they thought grief and morphine would silence.
Over the next forty-eight hours, I became the perfect victim.
I trembled when Daniel entered. I answered police questions slowly. I let Madison brush my hair while she bent close and murmured, “Play along, or next time you won’t wake up.”
I played along beautifully.
Meanwhile, Briggs worked.
The footage showed Daniel entering the garage at 1:13 a.m. carrying two red gasoline cans. At 1:27, he walked along the side of the house, gloved hands splashing liquid beneath the bedroom windows. At 1:34, he lit a strip of cloth with my silver monogrammed lighter.
The same lighter Madison had slipped into my purse after the fire.
She had planned the story carefully: depressed wife, accidental blaze, maybe suicide if necessary.