Chapter 3 - Nineteen Seconds
Elena showed Ryan the photo without handing him the phone.
His face drained of color.
“You know him.”
“That’s Daniel Cross.”
“Who is Daniel Cross?”
“Our internal security director.”
Elena almost laughed. “Of course he is.”
Ryan ignored the sarcasm. He zoomed in with his eyes, studying the still. “He shouldn’t be anywhere near your office.”
“He was near enough to use my credentials.”
Ryan looked toward the windows. “My mother has used Daniel for years.”
“For what?”
Ryan hesitated.
Elena put her phone away. “This is the part where you decide whether you’re embarrassed by your mother or afraid of her.”
His eyes flicked back to hers.
“That’s unfair.”
“No. It’s specific.”
He rubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “My father built the hotel business. My mother ran everything he didn’t want to see—staff disputes, vendors, press, family problems. Daniel handled… messes.”
“What kind of messes?”
“I never asked.”
“That answer usually costs people.”
“I know.”
For the first time all evening, he sounded like he meant it.
Elena called Marcus again and put him on speaker. Ryan confirmed Daniel Cross’s identity. Marcus swore softly.
“Police?” Ryan asked.
“Not yet,” Elena said.
His brows rose.
“We have unauthorized access and suspicious behavior,” she continued. “We don’t yet know what he saw, copied, or altered. I want logs preserved before anyone gets tipped off.”
Marcus said, “I’ve isolated the server. Nina is pulling door footage. Elena, you need to get somewhere secure.”
Ryan spoke before she could. “My townhouse.”
Elena gave him a flat look.
He winced. “Right. Terrible suggestion.”
“Extremely.”
Marcus said, “Come to the office through the loading entrance. I’ll have building security meet you.”
Ryan insisted on coming.
Elena refused twice.
He came anyway.
At 10:07 p.m., they entered Ward Forensic Advisory through a service corridor that smelled like cardboard and industrial cleaner. Marcus met them beside the freight elevator, gray-haired, broad-shouldered, wearing a wrinkled dress shirt and the expression of a man who had canceled dinner for trouble.
“You must be Ryan Vale.”
Ryan extended his hand.
Marcus looked at it.
Ryan lowered it.
“Fair,” he said.
Upstairs, Nina Park sat before three monitors in the darkened conference room. Code, access logs, and security video filled the screens.
“We found the nineteen seconds,” she said.
Elena moved beside her.
“What did he open?”
Nina clicked.
One folder appeared.
VALE MERIDIAN / PROJECT HARBOR / HISTORICAL CORRESPONDENCE.
Ryan frowned. “Project Harbor?”
Elena had never heard the name either.
Nina opened the access record.
Daniel Cross had viewed one scanned letter.
He had not downloaded it.
But before leaving, he had deleted the original from the archive.
Marcus smiled without humor. “Good thing we keep immutable backups.”
He restored the page.
The letter appeared on-screen.
It was dated eleven years earlier.
At the bottom was a signature Elena recognized instantly.
Her father’s.
Thomas Ward.
Ryan read the first line aloud.
“Mr. Vale, if your wife learns what you asked me to verify, I believe my safety may be at risk.”
Nobody spoke.
Elena stared at the signature.
Her father had died ten years ago in what police called a single-car accident.
May you like
Then Nina scrolled to the final sentence.
“If anything happens to me, look at Harbor 17.”
