Chương 6
Amount: $14.8 million.
Initiating user: EHayes-Admin.
Emily read the username twice.
“That’s my administrator profile.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t logged in.”
“We need the device logs.”
“Who was the second approver?”
“Mara.”
“Did she receive a request?”
“Not yet. The instruction was scheduled to route at nine this morning.”
Emily looked toward the glass wall. Mara stood at a workstation talking with three members of the finance team, one hand pressed to her forehead.
“Daniel didn’t have my password.”
Jonah pulled out a chair. “Then either he obtained it, someone else did, or the system record is wrong.”
“Those are not reassuring choices.”
“No.”
She opened the banking application and examined the login history. A successful session had originated from an address associated with Hayes Meridian’s guest wireless network.
At 4:01 p.m.
While Emily was outside the courthouse changing her PINs.
The old credentials had been used five minutes before she replaced them.
Someone inside the company had logged in as her.
The security footage showed three people entering the executive floor between three-thirty and four-fifteen.
A cleaning supervisor carrying a supply cart.
A junior architect retrieving a forgotten portfolio.
And Aaron Vale, Daniel’s former executive assistant, who had told human resources he was working from home.
Aaron sat across from Emily in a small interview room at four that afternoon. He was twenty-nine, narrow-faced, and dressed in a blue suit that fit badly across the shoulders. He kept rubbing the pale indentation where a wedding ring had recently been removed.
Celia conducted the interview. Jonah took notes. Emily had been advised not to attend because her presence might feel coercive.
She attended anyway.
Aaron looked at her only once.
“You accessed the executive floor yesterday,” Celia said.
“I left medication in my desk.”
“What medication?”
He swallowed. “That’s private.”
“You may provide the answer to counsel confidentially.”
“It was migraine medication.”
“Why did you tell human resources you were working remotely?”
“I was working remotely. I came in for five minutes.”
“Your badge remained on the floor for twenty-three minutes.”
“I used the bathroom.”
“On the executive floor?”
“The lobby restroom was being cleaned.”
Emily watched his hands.
Daniel had hired Aaron three years earlier and praised him as indispensable. Aaron scheduled travel, processed expenses, prepared approval packets, and knew which restaurants would seat Daniel without notice. He also sent handwritten holiday cards to Emily’s mother during her illness. After the funeral, he arrived before the family and placed white roses in every room.
“Did Daniel ask you to come in?” Celia said.
“No.”
“Did you communicate with him yesterday?”
“No.”
Jonah turned his laptop.
“Your company-phone records show two calls with Mr. Whitmore.”
Aaron looked at the screen, then at the table.
“He called me.”
“You answered.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t answer.”
“You said you didn’t communicate.”
“I thought you meant about coming here.”
Celia let the silence remain.
Aaron’s breathing became audible.
Emily understood why her father liked silence in interviews. People rushed to fill it, not because they were guilty, but because silence allowed them to hear how their own answers sounded.
“Daniel wanted a file,” Aaron said.
“What file?”
“His personal tax folder.”
“Where was it?”
“On the shared drive.”
“Why couldn’t he access it?”
“His permissions had been removed.”
“What did you do?”
“I downloaded it.”
“Using whose credentials?”
“My own.”
“Did you enter Emily Hayes’s office?”
“No.”
“Did you use a computer in the boardroom?”
“No.”
“Did you access the guest wireless network?”
Aaron’s eyes lifted. “Everyone does.”
“Did you initiate a wire for fourteen point eight million dollars?”
His chair moved backward with a sharp scrape.
“No.”
The response was immediate and, to Emily, real.
Celia did not react. “Did you provide Daniel with access to any company system after his permissions were removed?”
“I sent him the tax folder.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Did he ask for anything else?”
Aaron looked at Emily.
It was only the second time.
“He asked whether Ms. Hayes had changed her banking password.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“What did you tell him?” Celia asked.
“I said I didn’t know.”
“Did you know?”
Aaron’s face reddened. “I knew she hadn’t changed it in a while.”
“How?”
“I prepare the quarterly security acknowledgments.”
“You knew her password?”
“No.”
“Did Daniel?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily spoke for the first time. “Aaron.”
Celia turned slightly, warning in the movement, but Emily continued.
“You used to bring approval packets to our apartment.”
Aaron’s eyes lowered.
“Did you ever see me log in?”
“I didn’t watch.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
His mouth tightened.
Once, during a snowstorm, Aaron had worked at their dining table while Emily approved a stack of acquisition documents. Daniel poured bourbon and joked that his assistant knew more about their marriage than their therapist. Emily entered her password several times while both men sat nearby.
The password had been her mother’s middle name followed by the year her parents married.
A terrible password. A sentimental one. Daniel knew it.
Aaron pressed his palms to his knees. “He might have seen.”
“And the verification code?” Jonah asked. “The bank sends one to Ms. Hayes’s phone.”
Aaron’s face changed again.
Not guilt this time. Recognition.
“Her tablet,” he said.
Emily stared at him.
“The messages synced,” Aaron continued. “At the apartment. The old iPad in the kitchen. Daniel used it for recipes.”
Emily had left the tablet after moving out because Daniel claimed it belonged to the apartment’s smart-home system. She had removed photographs and email, but not checked whether text-message forwarding remained active.
Celia closed her folder. “We need that device preserved.”
Daniel answered the apartment door wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He smiled when he saw Celia, Jonah, and the digital-forensics specialist in the hallway. A building manager stood behind them with a copy of the property-access agreement from the divorce settlement.
Emily had not come.
Daniel noticed.
May you like
“This is theatrical,” he said.
Celia held out a court-approved preservation notice obtained that afternoon through an emergency civil application. It did not accuse him of theft. It required him not to alter specified company information and allowed inspection of company-owned devices believed to remain in the apartment.
