Chapter 5 - The Rumor Waiting at the Office
By nine-thirty, I had dropped Lily at school, and Elaine and I were in her office with the blinds closed.
The rumor had already outrun us.
Trevor went quiet when I walked past his desk. Two analysts stopped talking mid-sentence. HR had sent Elaine a polite message asking whether there had been “an incident” after the company event. Graham Ellis had sent three increasingly concerned emails asking if she was well enough to discuss “last night’s confusion.”
Elaine read the last one aloud with a flat expression. “He’s checking how much I remember.”
She pulled security logs, system access records, and the draft reserve file connected to Westridge. I pulled the original reconciliation spreadsheets from my archive. By noon, the shape of it became impossible to ignore.
Someone had accessed the financial system using my credentials at 8:14 p.m., while I was on the loft level and visible in thirty different party photos. Forty minutes later, Elaine’s badge was used to enter the restricted accounting suite—while she was half-drunk and leaning against a hallway wall asking me whether her car was silver or black.
Trevor had been seen leaving the suite two minutes after that.
Graham’s name appeared nowhere. Of course it didn’t. Men like Graham rarely touch the wire when they can get other people to carry the current.
Then we found the second layer.
A transfer template had been prepared to move almost two million dollars of Westridge reserve exposure off-book and into a shell consulting account scheduled to invoice the company the following week. The approving signatures were supposed to come from Elaine and me.
Mine was forged badly.
Hers had never been obtained, which explained the urgency of getting her disoriented and getting me positioned beside her.
If she woke up thinking I had crossed a line, she would never stand with me long enough to compare notes.
If the rumor spread first, I would look compromised before I ever looked framed.
Elaine sat back in her chair very slowly.
“They wanted me ashamed and you disposable.”
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“Did it work?”
She looked at me, steady now. “No.”
