I slammed the thick stack of financial reports onto the polished mahogany desk. The heavy thud echoed off the glass walls of the corner office.
"Freeze the accounts, Robert," I demanded. "Right now."
Robert adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and stared at the top page. He shook his head. "I can't do that, Claire."
"Why not?" I placed both hands flat on his desk, leaning forward. "He stole from my company. You're my corporate attorney. File the injunction."
Robert slid a single sheet of paper across the desk. A blue ink signature sat at the bottom of a block of dense legal text. My signature.
"You signed a blanket asset transfer authorization three months ago," Robert said. His voice stayed infuriatingly calm. "Evan used this to drain seventy percent of your liquid capital yesterday morning."
I stared at my own handwriting. My stomach dropped.
"He told me that was a standard tax liability waiver for the new office lease," I whispered, tracing the curve of the ink.
"It wasn't," Robert replied. "He wired the funds to three different offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands. The money is gone. Legally, you gave him permission to move it."
"I gave him permission to handle the lease," I shot back, my voice rising. "This is fraud. Call the bank. Tell them the authorization was obtained under false pretenses."
"The bank verified the transfer with a secondary phone call," Robert stated, tapping a manicured finger against the file. "Someone claiming to be you confirmed the transaction over the phone."
My eyes widened. "I never spoke to the bank."
"A female voice passed the security questions," Robert said. "Mother's maiden name, first pet, childhood street. Whoever it was, she had your entire profile."
Nina.
My fingernails dug into the leather edge of the desk. Evan had fed her my security answers. He used his fake wife to rob his real one.
"How much exactly did he take?" I demanded.
"Four point two million," Robert answered flatly.
"That leaves barely enough to cover payroll next week," I said, my voice trembling with suppressed rage.
"You need to prepare for bankruptcy, Claire," Robert advised.
"I'm not filing for bankruptcy," I snapped. "I built that software firm from the ground up."
"Legally, Evan was your co-founder," Robert reminded me. "He'd full executive privileges."
"Take this to court," I ordered.
"It's your signature on a legally binding document," Robert countered. He folded his hands together. "If we file a lawsuit, it will take years to untangle. You don't have the remaining capital to fight a protracted legal battle. The firm requires a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer to initiate litigation of this scale."
I snatched the paper off his desk. My jaw tightened so hard my teeth ached. The legal system wasn't going to help me. I needed Marcus.
Forty minutes later, I pulled my sedan into the gravel lot of a dilapidated auto shop on the east side. The heavy scent of motor oil and exhaust fumes hit my face as I stepped out of the car.
Inside the dimly lit garage, Marcus stood over a gutted engine block. He tossed a heavy steel wrench into a red metal toolbox. The loud clang made me flinch.
"Did you get the accounts frozen?" Marcus asked, wiping his grease-stained hands on a rag.
"He drained them," I said, marching past a stack of tires. "Four point two million dollars. He used a blank authorization form he tricked me into signing, and a female accomplice to bypass the bank's security."
Marcus stopped wiping his hands. He tossed the rag onto a workbench. "You think it was Nina."
"Who else knows my mother's maiden name and my childhood street?" I challenged. "He primed her for this."
"Nina is sitting in my living room crying over a stack of unpaid bills," Marcus growled, stepping into my path. "She didn't call your bank. She barely knows how to log into her own email."
"Then he hired an actress," I shot back, refusing to back down. "It doesn't matter who made the call. The money is gone. Did your people find him?"
Marcus walked over to a mini-fridge in the corner, pulled out a plastic water bottle, and tossed it to me. I caught it against my chest.
"My guys found something," Marcus murmured, his voice lowering low. He stepped closer, glancing over his shoulder toward the open garage bay doors. "Evan didn't just run. He hired professionals."
"What do you mean?" I asked, gripping the cold plastic.
"A cleaner," Marcus clarified. "My contact in the surveillance circuit tried to pull the municipal traffic feeds around the motel. The footage is gone. Wiped clean from the city servers."
My grip on the bottle tightened until the plastic crinkled. "Someone hacked the city cameras for him?"
"For the right price, you can buy a digital ghost," Marcus said. "They overwrite the server logs. The cops would just think it was a routine system glitch."
"So we have nothing," I stated, frustration boiling over.
"I didn't say that," Marcus replied.
He motioned for me to follow him into a cramped back office. The walls were lined with pegboards, and a single desk held a glowing computer monitor.
Marcus tapped the keyboard. A grainy, low-resolution image popped up on the screen.
"A pawn shop across the street from the motel has a private analog camera," Marcus explained, pointing a thick finger at the monitor. "Not connected to the internet. The cleaner couldn't hack it remotely. My guy went in and bought the physical tape."
I leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the blurry image.
A man stood on the sidewalk, his face obscured by the low quality of the lens. But I recognized the slope of his shoulders. I recognized the expensive wool coat I'd bought him for our fifth anniversary.
"That's Evan," I said.
"Look at his hand," Marcus directed.
I traced my eyes down the screen. Evan gripped a heavy black briefcase.
"That's where the cash went," I muttered. "He liquidated the offshore accounts into hard currency. He's carrying my company in that box."
Marcus hit the right arrow key. The next photo showed Evan climbing into the back of a dark gray van.
"No license plates," Marcus noted. "Tinted windows. Professional transport."
"Can your guys track a van with no plates?" I asked.
"Already on it," Marcus replied. He reached for the mouse. "We just need to enhance the reflection on the pawn shop window to get a partial DOT number off the side of the van."
Before he could click the image, the screen flickered. The grainy photo vanished, replaced by a solid black square.
"What did you do?" I asked, stepping back.
"Nothing," Marcus grunted, hammering the escape key. "The system is locked."
The mouse cursor disappeared. Lines of green code rapidly scrolled down the black screen, overwriting the operating system. The computer fan whirred loudly, spinning out of control as the processor overheated.
"Someone is in the network," Marcus said, his hands flying across the keyboard. "They're wiping the hard drive."
"Stop them!" I yelled.
"I'm locked out," Marcus shot back. "They left a backdoor in the municipal servers to track anyone who went looking for the missing footage."
A sharp burst of static crackled through the cheap desktop speakers. The noise morphed into a high-pitched, mechanical laugh. The sound grated against my eardrums.
"Stop looking," a distorted, synthetic voice hissed through the speakers. "You're both pawns."
Marcus lunged under the desk and ripped the power cord from the wall.
