Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WITH THE KEY
I grabbed the heavy glass bowl from the entry table.
The door opened two inches before the security chain caught.
“Claire?”
Natalie.
My assistant stood in the hallway, pale and breathing hard.
I lowered the bowl.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Ryan’s spare.” She held up a brass key. “You gave it to me when I fed your cat last winter.”
“You could have called.”
“I did. Four times.”
My phone showed missed calls beneath the unknown messages.
I slid the chain free.
Natalie stepped inside and handed me a laptop bag.
“Security was about to take this from your office.”
“My work laptop?”
“Martin told them you’d been suspended.”
Martin Kessler. Westbridge’s chief financial officer.
“Suspended for what?”
“Unauthorized transfers.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
Natalie opened the laptop on my kitchen counter.
Six payments filled the screen. Different dates. Different vendors.
Same project.
My forty-eight-million-dollar redevelopment.
The total was $2.4 million.
Beside every payment appeared my electronic approval.
“I didn’t authorize these.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because one cleared while you were standing in front of thirty people at the Phoenix conference. You handed me your phone before you went onstage.”
I stared at the vendor names.
Silverline Procurement.
Desert Meridian Consulting.
Bennett Development Services.
“That last one,” Natalie whispered. “Is it yours?”
“No.”
But Ryan had registered an LLC two years earlier.
He had called it a fresh start.
I had paid the filing fee.
My phone rang.
Luca.
I answered on speaker.
“How did you know the time?”
“What?”
“Three seventeen. On your card.”
A pause.
“That was when the safe alert came through.”
Natalie looked at me.
“What safe?”
“The one in my home office,” Luca said. “Vanessa used my override code. I wrote down the time while I was on the phone with security.”
“And then gave me the card?”
“Yes.”
“What did she take?”
This silence lasted longer.
“A paper file connecting Westbridge payments to companies controlled by your husband.”
My stomach tightened.
“You knew that at breakfast.”
“I had his name. I didn’t have the whole picture.”
“You had enough to tell me.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I did.”
Natalie turned the laptop toward me.
A new email had arrived from Martin.
Effective immediately, your access is revoked pending investigation.
Below it sat an attachment.
A signed statement accepting responsibility.
My name was already typed at the bottom.
May you like
Then someone began pounding on the door.
“Building security. We need the company computer.”
