The Woman on the Screen
Sebastian Rowe did not usually sit in the security room.
He owned Alderwick Residences, which meant other people watched the cameras, wrote the reports, handled the alarms, and made the building feel smooth enough for wealthy tenants to pretend no one was serving them.
But that morning, the head concierge had used a careful voice.
“There is a concern about one of the night housekeepers, sir.”
Sebastian hated careful voices. They were usually built around cowardice.
So he came down himself.
The security room was cramped and black, with stacked screens glowing over steel desks and stale coffee. The images shifted from corridors to lobbies to service doors, all blurred by reflection and distance. Nothing readable. Nothing clean. Just movement, shadows, and people behaving differently when they thought no one important was watching.
Then Nora Pike appeared on one of the feeds.
She was tall and bony in a charcoal maid tunic, shoulders folded inward as if she had trained her body to apologize before her mouth could. She entered Sebastian’s private study with a cleaning cloth in one hand and a tan handbag clutched close with the other.
“That is her,” said Martin Vale, the security supervisor. “She keeps going in there alone.”
Sebastian did not answer.
On the screen, Nora dusted a desk, straightened nothing, opened no drawers. Then she stopped before the portrait mounted near the shelves.
Sebastian knew the portrait. His own face. His own severe mouth. A commissioned thing he disliked but never removed because the board liked symbols.
Nora touched the bottom edge of the frame.
Not like a thief checking for a hidden safe.
Like someone asking forgiveness.
Her lips moved. The camera gave no words. Her eyes filled. She wiped them quickly, almost angrily, then finished cleaning and left the room exactly as she had found it.
Martin leaned over Sebastian’s shoulder.
“See? Strange behavior. We also found out her mother has outstanding medical debt. People like that get desperate.”
Sebastian looked at the screen until the hallway emptied.
“People like what?” he asked.
May you like
Martin went quiet too late.
That was when Sebastian decided to follow Nora himself.
