Chapter 2 - The Employee Badge That Should Have Been Dead
Emily did not get interviewed that morning.
She got questioned.
There was a difference.
Dominic moved them into a smaller conference room with glass walls that could turn opaque at the touch of a button. Meredith came too, along with Hartwell’s head of security, Marcus Bell.
Emily sat with her folder in her lap.
Nobody offered coffee.
She was glad.
Her stomach would have rejected it.
Marcus opened a laptop.
“Lucas Carter was employed here eight years ago.”
Emily looked at him.
“He told me he worked for a logistics company.”
“He did,” Dominic said. “Hartwell owned it.”
Emily laughed once.
It had no humor in it.
“Of course.”
Marcus continued.
“Internal audit. Special projects.”
“What kind of special projects?”
Meredith answered too quickly.
“Historical.”
Dominic looked at her.
Emily noticed.
So did Meredith.
Emily folded Lily’s note until the paper edge pressed into her thumb.
“When did he leave?”
Marcus checked the screen.
“Officially? Five years and two months ago.”
“The same week he disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Did he resign?”
Silence.
Emily’s chest tightened.
“Did he resign?”
Dominic said, “No.”
That one word rearranged five years of anger.
Not erased.
Rearranged.
“What happened?”
Marcus turned the laptop.
A photograph showed Lucas entering the building through a service entrance five years earlier.
Another showed him leaving after midnight.
Then nothing.
“No exit record after that date,” Marcus said.
Emily frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It gets worse.”
He opened a new page.
Employee badge: LUCAS CARTER.
Status: inactive.
Last access: nineteen days ago.
Emily read it twice.
“That’s the date on the rejection.”
Marcus nodded.
“His badge was used on the thirty-seventh floor at 2:13 a.m.”
Dominic leaned back.
“What’s on thirty-seven?”
Meredith’s jaw tightened.
“Archives.”
“Which archives?”
“Legacy client structures.”
Emily looked at her.
“What does that mean in English?”
Dominic answered.
“Old money.”
Meredith shot him a look.
He ignored it.
Hartwell Financial did legitimate work.
Investment consulting.
Corporate restructuring.
Private wealth.
But Dominic’s grandfather had also built a parallel network during the years when his family name meant something different in certain neighborhoods.
Loans that were not bank loans.
Security that was not police security.
Partnerships that appeared nowhere on annual reports.
Most had been dismantled or legalized before Dominic became CEO.
Most.
Emily had read rumors online.
She had dismissed them because she needed a job, not a crime documentary.
Now the man across the table was calmly telling her the archives included accounts created when Hartwell’s boardrooms still shared walls with men who carried guns.
Emily looked at Dominic.
“Are you a criminal?”
Meredith made a shocked sound.
Dominic’s expression barely changed.
“That is a large question for ten in the morning.”
“It’s smaller than ‘Where has my husband been for five years?’”
He accepted that.
“My family has history.”
“That is politician language.”
“I run legal companies.”
“Also politician language.”
Marcus coughed into his fist.
Dominic almost smiled.
Then Meredith said, “This is inappropriate. She came for an interview.”
Emily turned toward her.
“And somehow my missing husband rejected me before I applied.”
Meredith’s face cooled.
“We do not know that he did.”
“His name is on the form.”
“Credentials can be compromised.”
Dominic looked at Marcus.
“Can they?”
“Not easily.”
“Could the badge have been cloned?”
“Possible.”
“Could the authorization?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Different system. Different authentication.”
Emily’s heart began beating harder.
“So whoever did this had access to two things.”
“Yes.”
“And knew I would apply.”
“Yes.”
That frightened her more than Lucas being alive.
Because only a handful of people knew she had applied.
Her neighbor Mrs. Alvarez.
Lily.
The recruiter.
And Emily herself.
She had not even told former coworkers.
Dominic asked, “Why Hartwell?”
She frowned.
“What?”
“Why did you apply here?”
“Because you posted a job.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Emily’s exhaustion sharpened into anger.
“I need income.”
“There are other companies.”
“I applied to twenty-three.”
“Why this one?”
“Because the salary would let me stop choosing between rent and groceries.”
The room went quiet.
Dominic’s face changed slightly.
Not pity.
Good.
She would have hated pity.
Emily continued.
“And because the job description wanted someone who could reconcile messy accounts after a business disruption. That is what I spent three years doing.”
Dominic looked at the folder.
“What would you have said if the panel asked why we should hire you?”
Emily stared.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Meredith said, “Dominic.”
He ignored her.
Emily almost laughed.
Then something stubborn rose inside her.
Fine.
If this morning was already impossible, she might as well finish the sentence she had practiced in the elevator.
“You should hire me because I don’t panic when numbers stop matching,” she said. “I assume there is a reason. I keep looking until I find it.”
Dominic held her gaze.
Then he slid a printed ledger across the table.
“Find what doesn’t match.”
Meredith stood.
“You cannot be serious.”
Dominic looked at her.
“I am interviewing a candidate.”
Emily looked at the ledger.
Twenty-four transactions.
Vendor payments.
Payroll transfers.
Insurance reimbursements.
It took her six minutes.
Then she pointed.
“This.”
Marcus leaned closer.
“Hartwell Property Services.”
“No. The amount.”
“It’s forty-eight thousand.”
“Exactly. But the vendor total at the bottom is fifty-six thousand four hundred.”
She traced the line.
“Eight thousand four hundred disappeared between the detail and summary.”
Meredith said, “That could be formatting.”
Emily looked at the next page.
“It happens again.”
Then again.
Same percentage.
Same vendor family.
Dominic’s face went still.
“Where did you get this?” Meredith asked him.
“Thirty-seven.”
Now Meredith looked afraid.
Dominic stood.
The interview was over.
Or maybe it had finally begun.
He turned to Marcus.
“Lock the archive.”
Then to Meredith.
“No one leaves the building with records.”
Meredith’s eyes flashed.
“You cannot treat senior staff like suspects.”
Dominic’s voice lowered.
“I didn’t name a suspect.”
Emily watched Meredith realize she had named herself.
Dominic looked at Emily.
“You found in six minutes what three internal reviewers signed off.”
Emily closed the ledger.
“Then your reviewers are bad.”
Marcus looked down.
Dominic laughed once.
It was brief.
Real.
Then his phone buzzed.
He read the screen.
His expression changed.
Marcus asked, “What?”
Dominic turned the phone so they could see.
A security camera image from the night Lucas’s badge was used.
The man entering the archive had his face turned away.
But he wore a wedding ring.
Emily recognized it.
Not because of the ring.
Because of the scar across the back of his right hand.
Lucas got it repairing Lily’s crib before she was born.
Emily stood.
“That’s him.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You’re sure?”
She stared at the husband who had vanished from her life five years ago.
“Yes.”
May you like
Lucas Carter was alive.
And he had been inside Hartwell Financial nineteen days earlier.
