PART 8:

” Both attorneys nodded and reached for their materials. Ethan stood up. Charlotte caught his eye as he turned toward the door. A look that lasted less than a second, but communicated something he understood without translation. “Don’t let me down.” He wasn’t going to. He was back at his desk in 6 minutes with Marcus on the phone.

“I need everything formatted and documented by 2:30.” Ethan said. “Chain of custody, timestamps, software signature analysis. Make it readable to someone who doesn’t know what a machine fingerprint is.” “That’s a lot for 5 hours.” Marcus said. “Marcus.” A pause. “I know, I know. 2:30. Two.

” The morning moved at a pace Ethan recognized from the worst deadline cycles of his logistics career. Hours that felt both too fast and too slow, where every new piece of information was also a new variable, and the variables kept multiplying. At 10:15, he got a message from Diane. Not a call this time, a text from a number he didn’t recognize, different from the one she’d used before.

He found something you need to see. Parking garage, level B2, noon. He stared at the message for a long time. Then he forwarded it to Charlotte with three words. Your call. What do I do? Her reply came back in 90 seconds. I’ll send someone to sweep the space first. Go at not noon. Don’t go alone. He brought Marcus. Marcus, for the record, was not thrilled about this.

I’m a data analyst. Marcus said as they rode the elevator down. I’m not I don’t do parking garages. You’re doing one now. What if this is Kane testing us? Then we’ll know in about 4 minutes. Level B2 was mostly empty at that hour. The security sweep Charlotte had arranged, two people from the building’s facilities team, who looked like they’d been briefed quickly and professionally, gave them a clear signal as they came off the elevator.

Diane was standing near a support column, hands in her jacket pockets. She was younger than Ethan had imagined from her voice. Late 20s, with the look of someone who had been holding something heavy for a long time and was very tired of the wait. You came, she said. You said you had something. Ethan replied. She reached into her bag and pulled out a thumb drive, held it out.

He keeps a personal backup server, she said. Not connected to the company network. He thinks it’s clean. He doesn’t know that our IT system logs all local device connections, including air-gapped drives, whenever they interface with a company computer. She pressed the drive into Ethan’s hand. Three weeks of files, including the original audio he recorded at the party, and the edited version he was planning to release.

Ethan went very still. “Audio? He put a recording device in a plant arrangement near the bar,” she said. “It caught your conversation with her early in the night before the” She stopped. “He edited it, cut it, rearranged it. In the edited version, it sounds like the two of you planned the kiss in advance, like it was a performance, a distraction.

” “A distraction from what?” Ethan asked. “From the Callaway merger financials,” she said. “He’s been suggesting to certain investors that Charlotte inflated the projections. If the board thinks she was manufacturing a public moment to distract from bad numbers, then she’s not just guilty of bad judgment.” Ethan said quietly.

“She’s guilty of fraud.” Diane nodded. Her face was pale. Marcus was looking at the thumb drive in Ethan’s hand like it was a live grenade. “Diane?” Ethan said. “Why now? You’ve been sitting on this? Why today?” She was quiet for a moment, then “Because yesterday afternoon he told me to delete something, a file.

He told me it was routine cleanup.” She swallowed. “It wasn’t routine. It was the backup of the unedited audio, the original. He wanted it gone.” She looked at Ethan steadily. “I didn’t delete it. I copied it to that drive instead.” “That was a dangerous thing to do,” Ethan said. “I know,” she said. “I did it anyway.” He looked at her for a long moment.

“Are you safe?” “For now. He doesn’t know yet.” She pulled her bag back onto her shoulder. “Please be fast.” She walked past them and disappeared into the elevator without looking back. Marcus exhaled slowly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So, that happened.” “Come on,” Ethan said. “We’re going back upstairs.

” They were back on the 38th floor in 8 minutes. Door closed, thumb drive plugged into an isolated laptop Marcus kept for exactly this kind of analysis. The files opened. There were 47 of them. Document edits, communication logs, financial projections with annotation histories that showed exactly who had changed what and when. And at the bottom of the list, two audio files.

One labeled simply “Party recording, original.” One labeled “Party recording, board presentation.” Marcus played the original first. Ethan heard his own voice. Charlotte’s voice. The conversation they’d had near the side table. Her champagne glass, his sparkling water. The words about being the smartest person in a room full of people who needed her to fail.

It was exactly as he remembered it. Then, Marcus played the edited version. Ethan listened to 30 seconds of it and felt something cold move through his chest. It was the same voices, the same room. But the sentences had been surgically rearranged. In the edited version, Charlotte said, “We need to give them something to talk about tonight.

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