Chapter 4 - The Woman I Trusted Most
I didn't go to Hartwell alone.
I let Rebecca believe I did.
Daniel followed in another car.
Two detectives waited nearby.
Dad stayed with Sophie.
At 10:18 a.m., I entered the headquarters I had built from nothing.
Rebecca stood in my office.
"What happened?" I asked.
She closed the door.
"Someone accessed Bluebird."
"Who?"
"Ryan."
That answer came too quickly.
"How do you know?"
"Login records."
"Show me."
She hesitated.
There.
Tiny.
But enough.
"Rebecca."
"I'll show you."
"No."
I placed the photograph on my desk.
Her face drained.
Linda.
Voss.
Rebecca.
"Explain this."
She sat down.
For ten seconds, she said nothing.
Then:
"I can."
"Please do."
"That meeting wasn't what it looks like."
"People only say that when it looks exactly like what it is."
Rebecca almost smiled.
Almost.
Then she whispered:
"Charles Voss killed my brother."
I hadn't expected that.
"What?"
"Not literally."
She swallowed.
"Michael owned a manufacturing company in Ohio. Voss destroyed him."
Twenty years earlier, Voss had used predatory contracts and hidden shell companies to force Michael Sloan into bankruptcy.
Michael lost his business.
His house.
His marriage.
Then his life to suicide two years later.
Rebecca had spent years gathering evidence.
"So why meet him?"
"Because I've been feeding him information."
I stared.
"You've been what?"
"False information."
She explained.
Voss believed Rebecca hated me.
Believed she wanted Hartwell sold.
She had encouraged that belief.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because someone close to you was leaking."
"Linda."
"I suspected her."
"Ryan?"
"I wasn't sure."
"So you decided to conduct your own investigation using my company?"
"I was trying to protect it."
I laughed bitterly.
"Apparently everyone protects me by lying."
That silenced her.
"Who knows about Bluebird?"
"Voss."
My heart sank.
"He knows?"
"Not everything. But enough."
"And Linda?"
"Yes."
"Ryan?"
"I don't know."
I pulled out Linda's ledger.
Rebecca stared.
"Where did you get that?"
"Ryan."
Her expression changed.
"He found it?"
"Apparently."
Rebecca opened the notebook.
Then she pointed at the initials beside several payments.
"C.V."
Charles Voss.
Others:
"O.B."
"Who's O.B.?"
"I don't know."
Then one set appeared repeatedly.
"R.M."
Ryan Mercer.
My stomach tightened.
Rebecca saw it.
"Emily."
"Don't."
"We don't know what those payments mean."
"His initials."
"Yes."
"My husband's initials."
"Yes."
I looked out the window.
Ten years of marriage.
How much of it was real?
Before I could ask another question, the fire alarm sounded.
Rebecca froze.
"Drill?"
"No."
Smoke appeared beneath my office door.
Real.
We ran.
Employees poured toward exits.
Someone shouted that the server room was burning.
The server room.
Where Bluebird files were stored.
Firefighters arrived.
The building evacuated safely.
But our internal servers were damaged.
Then Marcus, our IT director, approached me outside.
His face was gray.
"This wasn't electrical."
"How do you know?"
"The suppression system was manually disabled."
My stomach dropped.
"Who can do that?"
"Facilities."
Our facilities manager was Owen Briggs.
O.B.
I looked at Rebecca.
She understood too.
O.B.
Linda's ledger.
Owen had worked for me for seven years.
Longer than Ryan.
I called him.
No answer.
Police went to his home.
Empty.
Then Marcus checked access records.
Owen's badge had entered the server room at 8:42.
The fire began at 10:21.
And at 9:03, someone using Owen's administrator privileges copied Bluebird files to an external drive.
We had our insider.
Or so I thought.
Then Daniel called.
"Emily, police found Owen."
"Where?"
"In his car."
"Alive?"
A pause.
"Yes."
Relief.
"But he's unconscious."
"What happened?"
"Someone attacked him."
The story shifted again.
If Owen had set the fire, why would someone nearly kill him?
At the hospital, he woke briefly.
A detective asked who attacked him.
Owen whispered one name.
"Linda."
Then he lost consciousness.
My mother-in-law had gone from demanding a credit card to being connected to corporate sabotage.
But the biggest surprise came an hour later.
Police searched Owen's car.
They found $200,000 in cash.
And a photograph.
It showed Ryan meeting Charles Voss outside a hotel.
Dated three days earlier.
I stared at it.
Maybe Rebecca had been telling the truth.
Maybe Ryan hadn't been protecting me.
Maybe he had been protecting himself.
Then Ryan called.
"I need to see you."
"No."
"Emily, please."
"Why were you meeting Voss?"
Silence.
"How do you know that?"
"Answer me."
"I can explain."
"Everyone can explain."
"I was trying to buy time."
"For what?"
"To get the ledger."
"You have it."
"No."
My heart stopped.
"What?"
"The case I told you about wasn't the real ledger."
I stared at the notebook beside me.
"What is it?"
"A copy."
"Where's the original?"
"Voss has it."
"Then why does he want something from you?"
Ryan went silent.
"Ryan?"
May you like
Finally:
"Because I stole the page that can put him in prison."
