PART 2 — THE CAMERA IN THE CROWN
Andrew pulled Sophie to the floor.
I dropped behind the kitchen island as Mason ran toward the house.
A dark SUV turned onto our street.
It slowed near the driveway.
The passenger window opened.
Mason threw himself against our front door and shouted, “Basement! Now!”
Andrew did not hesitate.
He carried Sophie toward the stairs while I unlocked the door.
Mason entered and pushed me down as a sharp crack sounded outside.
The kitchen window shattered.
Glass struck the cabinets.
Another crack followed.
A small hole appeared in the wall above the sink.
The SUV accelerated away.
Mason remained over me until the engine faded.
“Was that a gun?” I whispered.
“Low-powered air rifle.”
He stood and looked toward the damaged wall.
“Enough to break glass. Maybe hurt someone. Mostly meant to scare us.”
His shirt was torn near his ribs.
“Why are you bleeding?”
“Someone tried to stop me from coming here.”
Andrew returned from the basement with a baseball bat.
He raised it when he saw Mason.
“Put that down,” I said. “He warned us.”
Mason removed his vest slowly and placed it on the floor.
“No weapons.”
Andrew kept the bat.
“Start talking.”
Mason pointed toward the evidence bag.
“That camera is transmitting.”
I stared at the blinking device.
“To whom?”
“That’s what I came to find out.”
He wrapped the bag in aluminum foil from our kitchen drawer.
The blinking stopped.
Police arrived minutes later.
This time, the responding officers were led by Detective Helen Price, the investigator assigned to the restaurant incident.
She examined the broken window, took our statements, and secured the crown.
When Mason explained what happened, her expression remained guarded.
“You were asked to come to the station.”
“I was on my way.”
“You disappeared for almost a day.”
“I was looking for the man who gave the sparkler to Travis.”
My stomach dropped.
“You saw someone give it to him?”
Mason nodded.
“Before the party.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I wasn’t sure what I saw until the video was posted.”
He described arriving early to meet another veteran from his club. In the parking lot, he noticed Travis speaking to a man beside a delivery van.
The stranger handed Travis a narrow package wrapped in silver paper.
Mason assumed it was part of the birthday decorations.
“What did the man look like?” Detective Price asked.
“Late forties. Thin. Gray cap. Burn scar on his left hand.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No.”
“But he recognized me.”
Mason explained that after the first video went viral, someone sent an anonymous message to the Iron Harbor club.
It contained a photograph of Mason entering the restaurant and a warning:
Stay quiet about what you saw in the parking lot, or the next fire will not be stopped.
Mason traced the message to a motel outside the city.
When he arrived, someone attacked him in the parking lot and escaped in a dark SUV.
“You should have called us,” Detective Price said.
Mason looked at her.
“The person who threatened me included a photograph taken from inside your evidence room.”
The room went silent.
Detective Price’s expression changed.
“What photograph?”
Mason handed her his phone.
The image showed the sparkler’s scorched metal base resting inside a clear evidence bag.
A police identification card was visible beside it.
Price stared at the screen.
Only officers and evidence technicians should have had access.
“You think someone inside the department is involved?” Andrew asked.
“I think someone wants the public focused on me,” Mason said. “And they knew exactly how the evidence would move.”
My phone rang again.
This time, it was Travis.
I answered on speaker.
“Where are you?”
He sounded frightened.
“Emily, I made a mistake.”
“You posted a lie.”
“I didn’t know the crown would catch fire.”
Detective Price raised a finger, signaling everyone to remain quiet.
“Who gave you the sparkler?” I asked.
“I can’t say.”
“You put it on Sophie’s cake?”
“I was told it was safe.”
“By whom?”
A long silence followed.
Then Travis whispered, “The man said it would make a dramatic burst behind her when she blew out the candles. He said it would help the video.”
My anger became something cold.
“You endangered my daughter for views.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You hid the truth afterward.”
“He told me I had to.”
“Why?”
“Because the sparkler wasn’t the point.”
I looked at Mason.
“What was the point?”
Travis began crying.
“The camera.”
The tiny device in Sophie’s crown had been placed there before the party.
The sparkler’s heat was supposed to melt the decoration and destroy it.
Mason had removed the crown too quickly.
The camera survived.
“What was it recording?” Detective Price asked.
“Not Sophie.”
Travis lowered his voice.
“It was pointed toward the bikers’ table.”
Mason went still.
The Iron Harbor club was not simply a motorcycle group.
Several members were military veterans. They operated a nonprofit that transported medicine and emergency supplies to rural communities.
Two months earlier, the club had reported that several shipments disappeared from a warehouse run by a private contractor.
Mason had begun investigating.
The missing cargo included expensive cancer medication.
The police suspected theft but had no proof.
Someone had used Sophie’s party to record Mason’s conversation with the other club members.
They expected him to discuss the stolen shipments.
The sparkler would then destroy the camera.
The edited viral clip would discredit him if he raised questions.
“Who hired you?” Mason asked.
“I never got his real name.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At a warehouse near Riverside.”
Detective Price ordered Travis to remain on the phone.
He suddenly gasped.
Someone knocked at his door.
“Do not open it,” she said.
The line went silent.
Then a man’s voice spoke through Travis’s phone.
“You should have kept the original edit.”
The call ended.
Police units were sent to Travis’s apartment.
They found the door open.
His phone lay on the floor.
Travis was gone.
For the next six hours, investigators searched his building and surrounding streets.
There was no sign of him.
Meanwhile, technicians examined the camera from Sophie’s crown.
It contained ninety minutes of video.
Most showed the party from a child’s height.
But its microphone had captured the bikers’ conversation.
Mason and two club members discussed the missing medicine shipment.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Halpern Logistics.
The company stored medical cargo for hospitals across Tennessee.
Paul Halpern, its owner, had donated heavily to local police charities.
Detective Price quietly checked department records.
The officer whose identification card appeared in the evidence-room photograph was Lieutenant Greg Nolan.
Nolan supervised the property division.
He was also Paul Halpern’s brother-in-law.
Price ordered the evidence moved to a federal facility.
Before she could leave our house, the lights went out.
Every home on the street went dark.
Mason moved immediately.
He closed the curtains and told us to stay low.
A car door slammed outside.
Then another.
Andrew looked through the edge of the curtain.
“Two men.”
Mason took the baseball bat.
“You said you had no weapons,” Andrew whispered.
“I didn’t when I came in.”
The back door handle moved.
Detective Price drew her service weapon.
Someone struck the door hard.
Once.
Twice.
The frame cracked.
Mason directed us toward the basement.
Sophie refused to leave him.
“Monster man is coming too.”
He crouched beside her.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“Promise?”
Mason hesitated.
Then nodded.
“Promise.”
Andrew carried her downstairs.
I followed, but before closing the basement door, I looked back.
The kitchen entrance burst inward.
Two masked men entered.
Mason swung the bat at the first.
Detective Price shouted for them to drop their weapons.
The second intruder threw something across the room.
A cloud of smoke filled the kitchen.
The basement door slammed between us.
Sophie began crying.
Above us, furniture crashed.
Then two gunshots sounded.
Andrew held Sophie against his chest.
I reached for the basement window.
A shadow appeared outside it.
Someone was waiting in the yard.
The glass broke inward.
Hands reached through and grabbed my wrist.
I screamed.
Then a familiar voice came from the darkness.
“Emily, don’t fight me.”
It was Travis.
His face was bruised.
A chain circled one wrist.
“They let me come here so I could open the window.”
Behind him stood Lieutenant Nolan.
He pressed a gun against Travis’s back.
“Bring me the camera,” Nolan said, “or your cousin dies first.”