Chapter 4 - Someone Inside Northline
I had built Northline on one principle.
Information was power only if people trusted you not to misuse it.
By one o’clock in the morning, I no longer knew whether I could trust my own company.
“Lock the archive facility remotely,” I told Jonah.
“It’s already restricted.”
“Make it more restricted.”
He called security.
I contacted police and gave them the anonymous caller’s statement.
Then I made the decision that scared me most.
I told our internal security director, Marcus Reed, nothing.
Marcus had been with Northline for four years.
Former federal investigator.
Impeccable credentials.
He supervised the archive building.
If someone inside my company was helping Richard Caldwell, Marcus had access to almost everything.
I hated suspecting him.
I hated suspecting anyone.
But trust without verification was how companies ended up on the evening news.
At 1:28 a.m., two Chicago police units arrived at the archive facility.
Jonah and I stayed at headquarters while officers searched the building.
Nothing.
No Evelyn.
No intruder.
No broken locks.
Then one officer noticed something.
A security camera on the third floor had been manually repositioned toward the wall.
The timestamp showed the change had occurred at 6:11 p.m.
During the wedding.
“Who has access to that floor?” I asked.
Jonah pulled records.
“Facilities. Security. Executive team.”
“How many people?”
“Seventeen.”
“Badge logs?”
He typed.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“There’s one entry at 5:42.”
“Whose?”
He turned the screen toward me.
CLAIRE BENNETT.
For a moment, I thought I had read it incorrectly.
“My badge?”
“Yes.”
“I was home.”
“I know.”
“Check camera footage at the entrance.”
He did.
At 5:41 p.m., a woman wearing a dark coat entered using my access credential.
Her face remained hidden beneath a baseball cap.
She moved like someone who knew exactly where she was going.
At 5:46, she disappeared into the service elevator.
At 6:07, she returned.
This time she was not alone.
Another woman walked beside her.
Evelyn Caldwell.
Alive.
Evelyn looked frightened but not restrained.
She carried a small suitcase.
At the front door, she stopped and stared directly at the camera.
Then she lifted one hand.
Three fingers.
Lowered them.
Two fingers.
Then one.
Jonah frowned.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
The two women left.
There was no license plate visible.
At 2:04 a.m., Marcus Reed finally arrived at headquarters.
“You called police into my building without notifying me?” he demanded.
“My building.”
He stopped.
I had never spoken to him like that.
“What happened?”
“My badge was cloned.”
His expression changed instantly.
“Show me.”
We watched the footage.
Marcus said nothing until Evelyn appeared.
Then his jaw tightened.
“You know her,” I said.
“No.”
“You reacted.”
“I recognized her from television.”
“That wasn’t recognition.”
He stepped away from the monitor.
“Claire, you hired me because I know security. If someone compromised your access badge, we need to assume the entire system is breached.”
“Agreed.”
“So why am I standing here being interrogated?”
“Because you supervise the building where my credential was used.”
“That doesn’t make me guilty.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
I held his gaze.
“I’m thinking I don’t know enough.”
That answer seemed to disturb him more.
He turned toward Jonah.
“Pull the raw access logs.”
“Already did.”
“Server-level?”
Jonah nodded.
Marcus sat down.
For twenty minutes, he reviewed data.
Then he pointed at an entry.
“There.”
“What?”
“The badge wasn’t cloned.”
I leaned closer.
“Then how was it used?”
“It was issued.”
“To whom?”
“That’s the problem.”
Marcus enlarged the record.
An administrator had created a temporary duplicate credential tied to my executive profile.
The authorization came from an internal account.
JONAH PRICE.
I looked at Jonah.
He went pale.
“I didn’t do that.”
Marcus gave a humorless laugh.
“You expect us to believe your login created a badge for Claire and you knew nothing about it?”
“I was at the wedding venue from four until seven.”
“Why?”
I turned toward him.
That part was new.
Jonah swallowed.
“I was meeting a potential client.”
“At Madison’s wedding?”
“No. The hotel conference center.”
“Who?”
He hesitated too long.
“Jonah.”
“Evelyn Caldwell.”
My entire body went cold.
Marcus stood.
“You met the missing woman?”
“She contacted me three days ago.”
“And you said nothing?”
“She demanded confidentiality.”
“She knew I owned Northline,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did she contact you?”
“She wanted Northline to preserve evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“I never got the chance to find out.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“She didn’t show up.”
“You just said you met her.”
“I went there to meet her. She never came.”
“Then why hide it?”
“Because thirty minutes later, her husband became our potential client. I knew how it would look.”
“It looks worse now.”
“I know.”
Marcus stared at him.
“Where were you at 5:42?”
“Hotel conference room C.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“Enough,” I said.
My company was beginning to crack under suspicion exactly when someone wanted it to.
That realization hit me.
“What if that’s the point?”
Both men looked at me.
“Richard hires us,” I continued. “Anonymous evidence appears. My badge gets used. Jonah’s credentials issue it. Evelyn disappears. Within hours, Northline becomes part of the story.”
Marcus slowly nodded.
“If investigators think Northline helped hide Evelyn—”
“We lose credibility,” Jonah said.
“And Richard can claim anything Evelyn collected was manipulated by us.”
Exactly.
Someone was not merely hiding a financial crime.
They were building a contamination trail around the evidence.
My phone rang again.
Madison.
This time, Mom was screaming in the background.
“Claire, something happened.”
“What?”
“Someone came into my room.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is Mom hurt?”
“No.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what happened?”
Madison began breathing quickly.
“They left something on the bed.”
“What?”
“A photograph.”
She sent it.
The picture showed Madison at nineteen years old standing beside me at our father’s funeral.
Someone had drawn a red circle around my face.
On the back, written in black marker:
YOUR SISTER SHOULD HAVE STAYED POOR.
I stared at the message.
May you like
This was no longer just a corporate scandal.
Someone had decided I was part of it.
