Chapter 9 - The Backup Nobody Knew About
Paul had worked for us for eleven years. He had attended Thomas's funeral. His children called me Aunt Eleanor. There are betrayals you can recognize coming and betrayals that arrive wearing a familiar face.
Martin said the IT team was protecting the remaining system logs. I instructed him not to confront anyone and called the hotel's cyber-response company. We couldn't undo a deletion with anger.
Daniel drove us back. He kept both hands on the wheel.
“I approved Paul for that promotion,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I told you he was loyal.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me you warned me?”
“No. I'm going to ask what you've learned.”
He swallowed. “Loyalty isn't the same as accountability.”
At the hotel, our IT manager, Priya Shah, met us in a locked office. She had copied nightly backups to an off-site archive after a ransomware scare the previous year.
“Paul deleted the visible ledger,” Priya said. “He couldn't delete everything.”
She showed us a sequence of altered invoices. Three contractors had supposedly completed major electrical work. One business address was a vacant storefront. Another used a telephone number associated with Charles Whitmore's old brokerage.
“The invoices total two million, four hundred thousand dollars,” Priya said. “The work doesn't exist.”
Daniel sat down without speaking.
Then Priya opened the approval logs. Several changes had been made under Daniel's account from a hotel computer at times when he had been traveling.
“Someone used your credentials,” she told him.
“Vanessa knew my password,” he admitted. “I thought I had nothing to hide from my wife.”
“Trust,” I said, “doesn't require giving away every key.”
Priya scrolled to a recent entry. “This is strange. Paul exported one encrypted file an hour before he left.”
“Where did it go?” Martin asked.
“To an external drive. But he named the export after a guest room.”
She pointed to the screen.
May you like
SUITE 1812.
Ruth Bell's room.
