Chapter 7 - THE SECOND PASSWORD
Ethan did not accuse Harris immediately.
He asked for the phone.
“What?”
“Your phone. The one that gets your login codes.”
Harris handed it over.
The deletion request had been submitted at 3:54 p.m.
At 3:53, Harris’s phone had received a six-digit authentication code.
He had been standing inside Unit 4D with Ethan when it arrived.
“Did you read this?”
“No.”
The message preview had displayed the code directly on the lock screen.
Anyone close enough could have seen it.
But nobody except Ethan, Noah and Harris had been in the apartment.
Ethan looked at Noah.
Noah raised both hands.
“Don’t even start.”
“I’m not.”
Harris took the phone back.
“There’s another way.”
He opened his account-security settings.
Two devices were authorized.
His phone.
And a tablet identified as RICHARD-H-OFFICE.
“I don’t own a tablet.”
The device had been added eleven months earlier.
Location history showed repeated logins from the leasing office.
Dana had not needed Harris’s phone.
She had created a persistent authorized device under his name.
“That’s how she used your signature approvals,” Ethan said.
Harris looked sick.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“I’m trying not to accuse somebody of felonies without evidence.”
“She emptied my apartment.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
Harris sat down.
“Fine. I enabled this.”
Ethan stopped.
“What?”
“Not knowingly. But I enabled it.”
Eleven months earlier Dana had told him new banking-security rules required all ownership accounts to authorize an office tablet.
He had approved the setup remotely.
He had never asked why.
That single act gave Dana continuous access to his administrative identity.
It explained the deleted file.
It could also explain the owner approval on transition records.
But it did not explain who at Morrow had been sending money to Dana’s private company.
The story was expanding beyond the property.
Ethan contacted the four former tenants again.
He asked for every payment form, every email address and every name.
The same Morrow employee appeared repeatedly.
Grant Voss.
Sometimes his signature.
Sometimes his initials.
Sometimes copied on messages.
At 7:30 that evening, Ethan finally slept for ninety minutes on an air mattress Noah lent him.
When he woke, there was someone pounding on 4D.
It was Harris.
He held a thick file.
“Morrow sent this during due diligence.”
The file contained the entire transition program.
Harris had found it in an archive folder Dana had labeled INSURANCE.
Ethan flipped through pages.
The program was legal on its face.
Morrow could fund voluntary buyouts before closing. Harris could authorize Dana to negotiate. Tenants could accept or refuse.
Nothing permitted deception.
Nothing permitted forced removal.
Then Ethan reached the compensation schedule.
Each successful vacancy earned the transition administrator a service fee.
One thousand dollars.
Not enough to explain Dana’s behavior.
Harris pointed farther down.
“Read the appendix.”
A separate incentive existed for units delivered “vacant, cleared and renovation-ready” before closing.
Five thousand dollars per unit.
Paid to the approved relocation vendor.
Dana’s company had somehow become that vendor.
With the diverted tenant funds, she could earn between eleven and fourteen thousand dollars per apartment.
Six units meant more than seventy thousand dollars.
But Noah noticed something else.
“Why is 4B highlighted?”
His unit was the only one on the target list with a red mark.
Beside it was a handwritten note.
LEGAL VEHICLE AVAILABLE.
Ethan read the words twice.
Noah’s eviction had not simply been another target.
It had been useful.
Dana had seen his pending possession case as the legal vehicle she needed to create a contractor job that looked legitimate.
When Noah paid and stopped the eviction, the opportunity should have disappeared.
Instead, she used the canceled order anyway.
“She was running out of time,” Ethan said.
Harris nodded toward the closing date.
“Friday.”
Forty-eight hours.
Then Harris found another page.
FINAL DELIVERY REQUIREMENT: MINIMUM SIX QUALIFYING VACANCIES.
Five units had already been cleared.
4D would make six.
The additional sale adjustment triggered only if six were delivered before closing.
Ethan finally understood why Dana had taken a risk she had avoided with the others.
Without his apartment, the threshold was missed.
With it, the sale gained an additional $180,000 renovation credit.
Dana’s personal payment was only part of the motive.
Someone connected to the sale stood to gain much more.
At the bottom of the threshold page were two initials.
D.M.
And G.V.
Dana Mercer.
May you like
Grant Voss.
The scheme did not stop at the leasing office.
