Chapter 18 - Nineteen Minutes
The estate became a command center.
Laptops covered the dining table. Attorneys called banks. IT specialists traced accounts. Vincent coordinated with detectives reviewing Rusk's seized devices.
Dominic stood at the center of it all with no brace on his leg.
Clare watched from the doorway.
"You should sit down."
"I have eighteen minutes."
"You also have one knee."
He looked at her.
"Technically two. One is just unreliable."
She almost laughed.
The IT lead raised his hand. "We found the upload package. It's scheduled through an anonymous media distribution service. Medical records, forged physician statement, video clips of you falling during therapy."
Mercer swore. "They recorded private sessions."
"Can you stop it?" Dominic asked.
"Maybe. We need the account recovery key."
Vincent dumped the contents of Rusk's backpack onto the table.
Two phones.
A tablet.
Keys.
Cash.
A motel receipt.
And a small plastic key fob shaped like a hawk.
Ellie, awake now and eating dry cereal from a coffee cup, pointed at it.
"Click thing."
Everyone turned.
She hopped off the chair, took her latch board from Clare, and pointed to one of the puzzle pieces.
"Same open part."
The IT lead picked up the fob.
"It's not a key fob. It's a hardware token."
Vincent handed it over.
The technician connected it.
A recovery screen appeared.
"We still need a PIN."
Dominic looked at the hawk symbol.
Arthur's ring.
His signet.
The number engraved inside it had once represented the year Arthur joined Dominic's father.
1988.
"Try one-nine-eight-eight."
Access granted.
The technician canceled the upload with twelve minutes left.
A second technician looked up. "There's another scheduled action."
"What?"
"Automated transfer from three Vale operating accounts. Forty-two million total. Destination is offshore."
Vincent stared. "Arthur was taking the cash on the way out."
"Cancel it."
"Working."
Dominic's phone buzzed with a message from the bank chairman.
Emergency suspension lifted pending formal review.
Then his attorney called.
"Public filing has been withdrawn. You're still in control."
For the first time since the cane struck marble, the room exhaled.
Clare sat beside Ellie and closed her eyes.
Dominic should have felt victorious.
Instead he looked at his daughter-sized witness eating cereal and thought about how close adults had come to missing everything because they had dismissed what a child noticed.
The technician suddenly cursed.
"What now?"
"The bank transfer canceled, but somebody already moved five million yesterday."
"Where?"
He traced the routing information.
Then he turned the screen toward Dominic.
The receiving company was not owned by Arthur.
It belonged to one of Dominic's remaining councilmen.
May you like
A man who had sat quietly all night pretending to be shocked.
Peter Lang.
