Chapter 8 - The Strategy Meeting
Sarah didn't look surprised. In fact, a faint, approving smile touched the corner of her mouth. She pulled a fresh legal pad across her desk and uncapped a silver pen.
“If we go the public route, your husband’s defense strategy will shift instantly,” Sarah warned. “He’ll claim he had no idea the five-year-old document was fabricated, that he merely trusted a licensed physician's records provided to him in good faith. He’ll throw Dr. Vance under the bus to save his law license and his career.”
“Let him,” I said. “Dr. Vance won't take the fall alone if he has emails proving Daniel requested the file specifically for litigation preparation.”
“Do you have those emails?” Sarah asked, her pen hovering over the paper.
I paused, thinking back over the years of living with Daniel. He was meticulous, but he was also arrogant. He believed he was the smartest person in any room, which meant he often left digital footprints in places he thought were secure. “Not on my personal computer. But back when we first moved into our house, Daniel set up a home server in the basement for his firm’s remote data backups. He gave me administrative access once when the network crashed.”
Sarah’s eyes sharpened. “A home server mirroring his office workstation?”
“Yes. If he communicated with Dr. Vance about fabricating or retrieving that file years ago, or even coordinated with his current attorney using his home network, the local backup might still be sitting on that hard drive in our basement.”
“That’s a gray area legally since you're still a co-owner of the home, but if you pull data from a shared household device during an active separation, we need to be very careful how we acquire it,” Sarah cautioned. “Can you get into the house without Daniel knowing?”
“He’s at his firm’s downtown office until at least eight o'clock on Wednesdays for partner meetings,” I said, checking my watch. It was 4:15 PM. “Patricia is probably at her bridge club. Lily is with me this afternoon.”
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“I’ll have a secure flash drive couriered to your car right now,” Sarah said, standing up and extending her hand. “Clara, if you go into that house and find those files, we hold all the cards. But if Daniel catches you, or if he locks down the server remotely, we lose our smoking gun. Are you ready for this?”
I shook her hand, feeling the steady, reliable thrum of the beta-blocker in my veins. The days of feeling dizzy, helpless, and dependent on their version of reality were over. “I’m ready.”
