Chapter 4 - Someone had been there before me
I first discovered the Vance financial irregularities fourteen months earlier.
Not because I was spying.
Because Arthur humiliated me at dinner.
He had tossed a folder toward me and laughed:
“Since you’re sitting around all day, make yourself useful. Check these totals.”
Julian laughed too.
I took the folder upstairs.
They expected arithmetic.
I found fraud.
One vendor billed Vance Meridian $680,000 for consulting services.
No website.
No employees.
Registered address matched an empty warehouse in Delaware.
Another received $1.2 million across nine invoices for “international risk analysis.”
Its registered agent shared a surname with Beatrice’s personal attorney.
I told myself it might be legitimate.
Then I found a recurring account code:
T-17.
Payments entered.
Moved through two subsidiaries.
Disappeared.
I began keeping copies.
My old instincts returned.
Source.
Flow.
Beneficiary.
Authorization.
Four months later, I contacted federal authorities through a secure reporting channel.
Harris met me.
But at our first meeting he asked a question that confused me.
“Why now?”
“Because I found fraud.”
He looked at me.
“No. Why did you decide to come forward now?”
As though he had been expecting someone.
I thought it was interview technique.
Apparently not.
Someone had already reported the Vances.
Months before me.
Anonymous.
Highly detailed.
The whistleblower supplied archived ledgers dating back twenty-three years.
Yet the records had gaps.
I filled modern ones.
Someone else supplied the past.
“Who?” I asked Harris.
“We never confirmed.”
“Not even now?”
“No.”
Then he showed me one line from the earliest anonymous submission.
If Thomas Vance’s key still exists, Arthur cannot survive what is stored behind T-17.
T-17.
The code I had independently discovered.
My skin prickled.
“So Thomas was involved?”
“Possibly.”
“Dead people don’t submit tips.”
Harris looked toward the window.
“No.”
Then my nurse entered with good news.
The contractions caused by the fall had slowed.
My daughter remained stable.
I could breathe.
Until Rachel suddenly asked:
“Where’s Julian?”
Harris checked his phone.
“Still at the mansion.”
“Arrested?”
“No.”
Not yet.
Search warrant wasn’t an arrest warrant.
Evidence mattered.
Then Harris received a call.
He listened.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He stood.
“They opened Arthur’s secondary safe.”
“And?”
“More data keys.”
“How many?”
“Eleven.”
I stared.
Then:
“One is labeled Clara.”
May you like
My mouth went dry.
Why would Arthur Vance have an encrypted storage key with my name on it?
