Chapter 6 - The File With Her Name

While hotel staff crowded around her, Nora followed the trail of blood to a service corridor and found the server’s discarded jacket beside an open stairwell.

A security guard blocked her way.

“Private area,” he said.

“Then call your supervisor and explain why there’s blood on the floor.”

He hesitated just long enough for Adrian to appear behind him with his counsel badge. The guard stepped aside.

On the landing below, they found a small silver drive taped beneath the handrail. The blood wasn’t the server’s; it came from a smear on the jacket, likely from someone who had been cut during the struggle. The server herself had vanished.

Back in the suite, Luis plugged the drive into an isolated laptop. It contained a compressed set of vehicle logs, a test schedule, and a PDF labeled FINAL REVIEW. The first pages showed the same braking anomalies that had appeared in the report after Ethan’s crash.

Then Nora saw her own name.

NORA VALE — SYSTEMS AUTHORIZATION.

Her signature sat at the bottom of a document approving a software patch that disabled the emergency brake fallback during a high-speed test.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “I never approved this.”

Luis enlarged the file. “The certificate says your security key signed it.”

“My key was in my office in Seattle.”

Adrian’s expression changed. “Could someone have copied it?”

“Not without the hardware token.” Nora pressed a hand to her mouth. “Unless they took it from the lab.”

Luis scrolled to the metadata. The patch had been uploaded from a terminal assigned to the executive floor, then backdated by six hours. The authorization was real, but the time stamp was not.

Someone had stolen Nora’s credentials and used them to make her look responsible for Ethan’s death.

Her phone rang. Richard’s name appeared on the screen.

She answered on speaker.

“You have a talent for making every bad situation worse,” he said pleasantly. “Come to the office tomorrow morning. We can still protect the family.”

“Protect it from what?”

“From you.”

A second voice came through the call, faint but unmistakable: “Mr. Vale, the server room is clear.”

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Nora froze. Richard had not just been waiting for her return.

He was cleaning up the evidence while they spoke.