Chapter 4 - THE MIDNIGHT AUDITORS
The clock in the university computer lab ticked with a maddening, hollow rhythm.
By 2:00 AM, the massive data center was completely deserted, humming with the low, electric purr of a hundred server racks cooling themselves against the Dallas humidity.
Lucas sat furiously typing at his triple-monitor workstation, lines of green code and financial ledgers cascading down the screens like a digital waterfall. I stood behind him, holding a paper cup of stale black coffee, watching the numbers shift.
“I’m bypassing Vance Logistics’ primary firewall,” Lucas muttered, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with terrifying speed. “Arthur Vance uses an offshore clearinghouse in the Cayman Islands to launder the kickbacks he’s paying Dean. If I can intercept the cryptographic hash of Friday morning’s transfer…”
“Can you freeze it?” I asked.
“Not freeze it,” Lucas corrected, a sharp, dangerous grin touching his lips. “Redirect it.”
“Redirect it where?”
“Into an escrow account controlled by the Walter Hale Estate Trust,” Lucas said without looking away from the monitors. “Which legally cannot be touched by Dean, by the board, or by Arthur Vance, because it’s bound by an irrevocable family lineage clause that grandfather established thirty years ago.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Lucas, if we touch Arthur Vance’s money, his lawyers will come after us with everything they have. They’ll—”
“They won't know it’s us,” Lucas interrupted smoothly. He hit a final, decisive keystroke on the enter key.
BEEP.
A green dialog box flashed across the center screen: TRANSFER INTERCEPTED — REDIRECT COMPLETE.
“What just happened?” I breathed.
“The eight hundred thousand dollars Dean was supposed to pay Brielle on Friday morning as a down payment for the merger?” Lucas leaned back in his ergonomic chair, stretching his arms over his head. “It just landed in Grandma and Grandpa’s old philanthropic foundation account. As far as Arthur Vance’s automated system knows, the transaction went through successfully. But the money is gone, locked behind triple-encrypted municipal bonds that take six months to mature.”
I stared at the screen, a breathless, hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat.
For twenty-three years, I had lived in Dean’s shadow, believing I was the quiet, invisible partner—the “numbers person” who stayed in the background while he played the big boss.
I had forgotten something fundamental.
Numbers didn't belong to Dean.
Numbers belonged to me.
“What’s our next move?” I asked, straightening my shoulders, the exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours suddenly burning away, replaced by pure adrenaline.
Lucas pulled up a calendar schedule on the middle screen.
“Thursday morning. Less than thirty-four hours until the Friday board meeting,” Lucas said. “We need to pay a visit to the one person who helped Dean set up the fake vendor accounts in the first place—and who probably realizes by now that Dean is planning to throw her under the bus.”
I frowned, trying to think. “Who? Brielle?”
Lucas shook his head.
“Not Brielle. Brielle is just the puppet. We’re going to see the chief financial officer of Redstone Building Supply.”
May you like
My eyes widened. “Marcus Vance? Arthur Vance’s nephew?”
“No,” Lucas smiled coldly. “Marcus is just a figurehead. We’re going to see Harold Miller—the man who has signed off on every fraudulent check in Dean’s ledger for the past three years. And unlike Dean, Harold Miller has a mortgage, a conscience, and a very strong desire not to spend the next twenty years in a federal penitentiary for wire fraud.”
