Chapter 9 - THE MAN INSIDE OUR COMPANY
Only a handful of people knew I had visited my mother’s grave.
Dad.
Maya, my assistant.
Two investigators.
Our driver.
That meant the leak was close.
We audited Arden Risk.
Badge logs.
Phone access.
Vehicle trackers.
Client database activity.
At 2:13 a.m., our chief technology officer called.
“We found something.”
A user account had copied my location records.
Name: Owen Price.
Senior operations manager.
Worked for my father for twelve years.
Dad trusted him with his life.
We brought Owen into a conference room the next morning.
He denied everything.
Then we showed him the logs.
His face changed.
“Who paid you?” I asked.
“No one.”
“Try again.”
“I didn’t send the photo.”
“But you gave someone my location.”
Silence.
Dad leaned forward.
“Owen.”
He looked ashamed.
“Martin paid my brother’s medical bills.”
Dad closed his eyes.
“How much?”
“Two hundred eighty thousand.”
“And what did he want?”
“Information.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
The room went still.
Owen had given Martin internal schedules.
Security updates.
Maintenance windows.
Information about my father.
Information about me.
“Did you know about my mother?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did you help him after the gala?”
“No.”
“Who took the cemetery photo?”
“I don’t know.”
He gave investigators his communications.
Most messages came from an encrypted account labeled M.
We assumed Martin.
Then one voice note changed everything.
A woman spoke.
“Claire is becoming reckless. Keep her father distracted.”
I knew the voice.
Everybody in the city did.
Celeste Vale.
Martin’s wife.
Preston’s mother.
The woman whose kidnapping threat had caused my father to build the lockdown system in the first place.
May you like
The supposed victim.
She had been part of the machine all along.
