Chương 12
“Traitor.”
Ravi looked between them with open curiosity.
Eve pointed at him.
“Not a word.”
Adrian’s tone shifted.
“There’s been another email.”
The car became quiet.
Lena’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“Who received it?”
“All salaried Westbridge employees.”
Ravi closed his laptop.
Eve leaned forward between the seats.
“What does it say?”
A pause.
Then Adrian said, “It says the layoffs are no longer the real story.”
Eve felt something cold move through her.
“What is?”
Adrian answered without hesitation.
“Supplier fraud.”
The road hummed beneath the tires.
Lena swore softly.
Adrian continued.
“The email claims Claire Sterling discovered it before she died.”
Eve looked at Lena.
Lena had gone pale.
“And whoever sent it,” Adrian said, “used Claire’s private Westbridge email address.”
For several seconds, no one in the car spoke.
Ravi was the first to break the silence.
“Could the account have been compromised?”
Lena kept her eyes on the highway.
“It was disabled after Claire died.”
Adrian’s voice came through the speakers.
“Disabled is not deleted.”
Eve leaned closer to the dashboard.
“Who still has administrative access?”
“Our IT team.”
“How many people?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Find out before we arrive.”
“I already asked.”
“Did the email include attachments?”
“One spreadsheet.”
Ravi opened his laptop again.
“Can you send it?”
“No.”
Eve looked at the speaker.
“Why not?”
“Legal is preserving the original.”
“That doesn’t prevent sending us a copy.”
“It does until they clear it.”
Eve sat back.
“That sounds like Celia.”
“It is.”
Lena gave a grim little smile.
“Celia would preserve a sandwich if she thought it might become evidence.”
Adrian ignored that.
“The spreadsheet appears to compare supplier invoices against internal purchasing records.”
“Appears?”
“Some figures match archived records.”
“And some don’t?”
“We haven’t confirmed them.”
Eve looked out at the bare trees rushing past.
“Whoever sent this wants people to believe Claire found fraud.”
“Yes.”
“And they want the story attached to her name.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not accidental.”
“No.”
Adrian’s voice changed slightly on the word.
Eve pictured him standing in his Boston office, perhaps with the photograph behind him.
She resisted the impulse to soften her next question.
“When was the last legitimate email sent from Claire’s account?”
A pause followed.
“I don’t know.”
“Find that too.”
Lena glanced at Eve.
The old professional hierarchy had quietly disappeared somewhere between Boston and Worcester.
Adrian did not object.
Eve crossed her arms.
“And tell IT not to log into the account casually.”
“Celia has already frozen access.”
“Good.”
“Eve.”
“Yes?”
“If this becomes something outside your scope, you stop.”
His tone was controlled but not impersonal.
She felt Lena glance at her again.
“That was already the agreement.”
“I’m repeating it.”
“Why?”
“Because this just changed.”
She looked at the speaker.
“So did the reason we’re here.”
“No.”
His answer came immediately.
“The reason is still trust.”
Eve considered that.
He was right, though not in the way either of them wanted.
“Then we start with people, not the spreadsheet.”
“That’s what I hoped you’d say.”
The call ended fifteen minutes later.
By then, Adrian had confirmed that nine Sterling Capital IT employees had the administrative privileges necessary to restore or access archived mailboxes.
Three worked directly with Westbridge systems.
None had yet been interviewed.
Eve wrote the names in her notebook and drew a box around them, then immediately crossed the box out.
She did not want to begin imagining suspects before she met anyone.
Westbridge Components sat at the edge of a town whose main street still had a hardware store, a diner, and a pharmacy with a hand-painted sign.
The plant itself was larger than Eve expected.
Red brick buildings had been added to over decades, some old enough to have narrow windows, others clad in pale metal siding.
Steam rose from vents along the roof.
The employee parking lot was nearly full.
As Lena turned toward the visitor entrance, Eve saw the first sticker.
ASK US BEFORE YOU ERASE US.
It was fixed to the rear window of a pickup truck.
Then she saw another.
And another.
Ravi leaned forward.
“Well.”
Lena parked.
“Welcome to the trust problem.”
Inside, the lobby smelled faintly of machine oil and burnt coffee.
A receptionist named Donna handed them safety glasses and visitor badges without smiling.
“You’ll need steel toes past the yellow line.”
“We brought them,” Lena said.
Donna looked at Eve.
“You from Sterling?”
“Outside agency.”
“Same difference.”
Eve clipped the badge to her coat.
“Probably not to my billing department.”
Donna almost smiled.
Almost.
A broad man in his fifties emerged from a hallway.
He wore a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and introduced himself as Martin Hale, plant president.
His handshake was firm enough to feel deliberate.
“You picked a hell of a day.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He looked at Lena.
“Does Adrian know about the email?”
“Yes.”
Martin laughed without humor.
“Of course he does.”
Eve noticed the first name.
Not Mr. Sterling.
Not Adrian Sterling.
Adrian.
“Did you know Claire?” she asked.
Martin’s expression changed.
“Everybody who mattered here knew Claire.”
The answer was sharp enough to make Ravi glance up.
Eve let it pass.
Martin led them into a conference room overlooking part of the production floor through reinforced windows.
Machines moved beneath bright lights.
Workers in ear protection crossed marked lanes between stations.
Nothing outside the glass looked chaotic.
Inside, Martin shut the door harder than necessary.
“I want to be clear about something.”
Lena set her laptop on the table.
“That usually means I’m about to dislike what comes next.”
Martin ignored her.
“My people are scared.”
“We know,” Eve said.
“No, you know they received emails.”
He pointed through the window.
“I know which one has a kid starting college in September and which one is trying to refinance his house.”
His voice rose.
May you like
“I know who took overtime all last year because his wife’s medical bills are killing them.”
Eve watched him.
