Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Deloitte
Mara’s apartment in Belltown smelled of jasmine tea and laser toner.
I sat at her kitchen island wrapped in an oversized grey sweatshirt while she hooked my phone up to an encrypted external drive. On the table between us lay my battered notebook—the one I had kept hidden inside an empty cereal box in the pantry of the Vance kitchen for the last two weeks.
"You kept manual ledger entries?" Mara asked, peering over the rims of her reading glasses.
"If I accessed his server from the house Wi-Fi, Adrian’s IT guy would have flagged the IP address," I said, wrapping my cold hands around a steaming mug. "So whenever I brought Ricardo his evening coffee in the study, or cleaned up Vianey’s crayons from his desk, I memorized the routing numbers and invoice totals sitting in Adrian’s 'Approved' tray."
Mara flipped through the pages of my cramped, neat handwriting. Slowly, a slow, lethal smile spread across her face.
"People look at a woman in an apron wiping apple juice off a counter, and they think she's invisible," Mara murmured. "They forgot you passed the CPA exam with the highest score in Washington State eight years ago."
"I didn't care about the money at first," I said quietly. "When my mom died, I was so burned out from hospital bills and corporate fraud cases that I just wanted to do something real. Taking care of Vianey... she saved me, Mara. She was this tiny, broken little bird who wouldn't speak a word for the first month I was there."
My voice cracked. I looked down at the photograph the man in the town car had thrown at my feet.
"And now they're using her as leverage."
"More than leverage," Mara said, turning her laptop screen toward me. "I just ran the corporate registry on the three vendors you wrote down from Adrian’s invoices. Pacific Crest Maritime, Cascadia Container Group, and Aegis Logistics."
"Let me guess," I said. "Registered in Delaware within the last fourteen months?"
"Better. The sole managing member of the parent holding company in the Cayman Islands is a trust controlled by Celeste Laurent’s brother."
I sat up straight. "They're embezzling through fake freight overages. How much?"
"Based on the four invoice numbers you copied? At least four point two million dollars so far. And look at the date on the last transfer."
I leaned closer to the screen. "Tomorrow at noon."
"There's a twelve-million-dollar escrow release scheduled for tomorrow morning to acquire a non-existent port facility in Tacoma," Mara said. "Once that wire clears into the Cayman account, the money is gone. And why do you think they needed you out of the house tonight?"
"Because tomorrow is Thursday," I whispered, the pieces slamming together with sickening clarity. "Ricardo goes to the cemetery every Thursday morning for two hours without his phone. And Thursdays are my day to take Vianey to her pediatric dentist."
"If you’re gone, who takes Vianey tomorrow morning while Ricardo is at his wife's grave?"
My stomach dropped. "Adrian and Celeste. They aren't waiting until November to put her on a plane to Switzerland. They’re taking her tomorrow morning before the wire clears."
Just then, my phone vibrated against the wooden counter. An unknown local number flashed across the screen.
I hit answer and put it on speaker.
"Elena?"
It was a tiny, terrified whisper, muffled by the sound of rushing wind.
May you like
"Vianey?" I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the tile. "Vianey, sweetie, where are you?"
"I climbed down the trellis like we practiced for fire drills," Vianey sobbed into the phone. "Uncle Adrian came back. I heard him tell Celeste on the stairs that Daddy asked too many questions at dinner, and they have to change the medicine in Daddy's nightcap tonight."
