Chapter 3 - The Accountant Wakes.
Gabriel hit the fortieth-floor door hard enough to crack the stop against the wall.
The corridor lights were still on.
Nothing moved.
Luca drew his weapon and covered the left side.
Gabriel covered the right.
The office doors stood closed exactly as they had left them.
That was worse than finding them open.
Gabriel approached without speaking.
The electronic lock showed green.
Unlocked.
Owen had been ordered to secure it from inside.
Gabriel pressed his palm against the door and pushed.
The room was empty except for Norah.
She remained asleep on the sofa.
The white envelope rested on her chest.
Owen was gone.
Gabriel crossed the room first.
He lifted the envelope carefully.
No wire.
No obvious device.
Luca checked behind the bar, under the desk, and inside the bathroom.
"Clear."
Gabriel opened the envelope.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Norah leaving her apartment three days earlier.
Someone had taken it from across the street.
On the back were six printed numbers.
4-17-9-12-3-22.
Luca looked over Gabriel's shoulder.
"What is that?"
"I don't know."
Norah stirred.
Gabriel immediately lowered the photograph.
Her eyes opened slowly.
For a second she looked confused by the room.
Then she realized where her head was resting.
She sat up too quickly.
"How long was I out?"
"Not long enough."
She noticed Luca's drawn handgun.
Her exhaustion disappeared behind alarm.
"What's happening?"
Gabriel slipped the photograph into his pocket.
"Nothing."
Norah stared at him.
"There is a man holding a gun six feet away from me."
Luca lowered it.
"Sorry."
"That does not make it normal."
Gabriel sat beside her.
"Two men entered the building."
"What men?"
"We don't know yet."
Norah looked toward the locked doors.
"Where's Owen?"
Neither man answered.
Her face changed.
"Where is he?"
Luca looked away.
Gabriel held out the envelope.
"Someone was in here while you slept."
Norah's color drained.
She took the photograph.
Her fingers tightened at the edges.
"This was Tuesday."
"You remember the day?"
"I bought that coffee because the machine in my building was broken."
She flipped the photograph over.
The numbers faced her.
Norah stopped breathing.
Gabriel saw it.
"You know what they mean."
She shook her head too quickly.
"Norah."
"I said no."
"You recognized them."
She stood.
"I need my laptop."
Gabriel caught her wrist gently but firmly.
"You need to tell me what those numbers mean."
Norah pulled free.
"They might be indexes."
"Indexes to what?"
"The payment files."
Luca moved closer.
"Explain."
Norah reopened the laptop.
Her hands were steadier now.
Fear had done what coffee could not.
"The fraudulent invoices all have twenty-two-character authorization strings."
She opened a spreadsheet.
"If those numbers are positions, they tell us which characters to extract."
Gabriel watched over her shoulder.
Norah selected six invoice codes.
She pulled the fourth character from the first string.
Then the seventeenth.
Then the ninth.
One letter at a time appeared in a blank cell.
M.
A.
R.
C.
U.
S.
The room went still.
Luca whispered first.
"Marcus."
Gabriel's expression did not change.
Marcus Kane was Gabriel's younger cousin.
He was also the executive who controlled Northline Construction.
Norah looked at Gabriel.
"This could be planted."
"Everything can be planted."
"Then don't do anything stupid."
Luca looked offended on Gabriel's behalf.
Gabriel did not.
"Define stupid."
"Dragging Marcus into a room and treating six extracted letters like a confession."
Gabriel leaned both hands on the desk.
"You're very comfortable giving me orders tonight."
"I'm very tired. It removes social restraint."
Luca almost laughed.
Gabriel turned his head.
Luca stopped.
Norah opened Marcus's vendor approvals.
"Look."
There were twelve payments to a company called Meridian Civic Solutions.
Each invoice was just below the internal review threshold.
Gabriel's eyes hardened.
"How much?"
Norah totaled the payments.
"Two point seven million."
"And the other three hundred thousand?"
"Different route."
"Through who?"
Norah searched.
A new authorization trail appeared.
She stared at it.
"That's impossible."
"What?"
She rotated the laptop toward Gabriel.
The final approval credential belonged to Owen Pike.
Luca cursed.
Gabriel looked toward the door.
"Find Owen."
Luca reached for his phone.
Norah caught his sleeve.
"Wait."
"What?"
"Owen's credential approved the transfer at 11:42 tonight."
Gabriel checked the clock.
12:18 a.m.
Norah pointed to the record.
"But Owen was standing in this room with us at 11:42."
Gabriel looked at the access history.
Someone had cloned Luca's building pass.
Someone had cloned Owen's financial credential.
Someone had left Marcus's name hidden inside the invoices.
The entire trail was designed to point toward Gabriel's own people.
Norah whispered the conclusion before anyone else did.
"Someone isn't stealing from you."
Gabriel looked at her.
"They're trying to make you kill your own organization."
A phone began ringing inside the office.
It was not Gabriel's.
It was not Luca's.
The sound came from beneath the sofa where Norah had been sleeping.
Luca crouched and reached under it.
He pulled out a black disposable phone.
The screen showed one incoming call.
UNKNOWN.
Gabriel answered.
Before Gabriel answered the ringing disposable phone, Norah searched the underside of the sofa with the flashlight on Luca's phone.
She found two adhesive marks on the leather frame.
One belonged to the phone.
The other was empty.
"Something else was here," she said.
Luca crouched beside her.
"Tracker?"
"Maybe."
Gabriel looked around the room.
Norah followed his gaze toward the closed laptop.
She opened it again.
The system clock showed the correct time.
The network status showed no active connection.
Yet one line in the audit software had changed while she slept.
A transaction she had flagged red was now marked reviewed.
"Someone touched my files."
Gabriel leaned over her shoulder.
"What did they change?"
"Not much. That's the point."
She opened the version history.
The edit had removed a note she wrote beside a Harbor Stone invoice.
The note said DUPLICATE VENDOR BANK TOKEN.
Norah restored it.
"Why delete one note?" Luca asked.
"Because they don't want me following this token."
She copied the token into a search field.
Four payments appeared.
Each belonged to a different company.
Each had a different vendor name.
But the bank token was identical.
Gabriel's eyes hardened.
"Same recipient."
"Exactly."
Norah totaled the four amounts.
Three hundred and one thousand, eight hundred dollars.
The missing portion of the three million.
"There is our remaining money," she said.
Luca leaned closer.
"Where did it land?"
Norah followed the token.
The destination account was domestic.
A private trust company in Delaware.
The account name had been encrypted in the vendor export, but the first letter remained visible.
V.
Gabriel looked at her.
"Victor."
Norah shook her head.
"Or a thousand other words that begin with V."
"You enjoy ruining dramatic moments."
"It's why you pay me."
The disposable phone continued ringing on the floor.
Norah looked at it.
"They're calling because they know we found it."
Gabriel picked up the phone.
A man's voice spoke calmly.
May you like
"Ask the accountant what happened to her father."
Then the line went dead.
