Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Taught Her to Look Closer
Celia did not confront Ruth.
That was the first thing Lorenzo expected her to do.
It was also the first thing Celia refused to do.
“You’re going back in there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“If your supervisor installed surveillance software—”
“We don’t know that she did.”
“Her credentials did.”
“Credentials can be stolen. Mine were.”
He looked annoyed.
Celia pointed at him.
“That expression is why I’m not letting you anywhere near this conversation.”
“What expression?”
“The one that says you have three ways to make a person regret disappointing you.”
“I have more than three.”
“That was not reassuring.”
“No.”
Celia returned to the office and asked internal security for written confirmation that Ruth’s administrator credentials had been used.
They refused because the review was ongoing.
Good.
That meant the process still existed.
She emailed herself nothing.
Copied nothing.
Touched nothing outside her assigned work.
At five, Ruth stood beside her cubicle.
“Walk with me.”
They went to the riverwalk.
Cold wind pushed between buildings.
Ruth stopped beneath a concrete overhang.
“You know about my credentials.”
Celia looked at her.
“Yes.”
“I did not install anything.”
“I want to believe you.”
“That sounds worse than calling me a liar.”
“I learned from you.”
Ruth looked toward the water.
“My administrator token was copied in August.”
“Did you report it?”
“No.”
Celia stared.
“Why?”
“Because the person who told me he had it also sent photographs of my son.”
Celia’s anger paused.
Ruth’s son, Michael, was twenty-eight and worked nights as an emergency-room nurse.
“What kind of photographs?”
“Leaving work. Entering his apartment. Sitting in his car.”
“Travis?”
“I never saw Travis.”
“Who contacted you?”
“Anonymous email.”
“What did they want?”
“At first? Nothing. They wanted me to know they could reach him.”
Celia felt sick.
“Then what?”
“Move Harbor Light reviews to low priority. Delay subpoenas. Approve two outside extensions.”
“You did it.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you call police?”
“I told myself I needed time.”
“That is not an answer.”
Ruth looked at her.
“I was scared.”
Celia heard herself in the words.
Every time she had minimized Travis.
Every police report she almost did not file.
Fear had made both of them smaller.
That did not erase responsibility.
“Did you give anyone access to my computer?”
“No.”
“Did you give them your administrator token?”
“No. They already had it.”
“Why pull me off the case?”
“Because I realized somebody had moved from manipulating paperwork to entering your home.”
“Then tell internal security everything.”
Ruth’s eyes filled.
“If I do, I lose my job.”
“Maybe.”
“My pension.”
“Maybe.”
“My reputation.”
“Yes.”
Ruth flinched.
Celia kept going.
“You taught me that motive doesn’t erase conduct. You delayed an investigation because someone frightened you.”
“I was protecting my son.”
“You were protecting him in secret. That gave them leverage forever.”
Ruth closed her eyes.
“I know.”
Celia took out her phone.
“Call Inspector General Marsh.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Ruth stared at her.
Then dialed.
By seven, Ruth was on administrative leave and cooperating with internal investigators.
Celia was not restored to Harbor Light.
She did not ask to be.
That surprised Lorenzo when she told him.
“You fought to stay on it yesterday.”
“Yesterday I thought being removed meant I was being discredited. Today I understand I’m a witness.”
“Progress.”
“Don’t sound proud.”
“I am.”
“That is irritating.”
He looked almost pleased.
They were sitting in the back booth of an old Italian restaurant Lorenzo apparently owned but did not advertise owning. Celia had chosen the table nearest the front door.
He noticed.
He did not comment.
Instead he gave her a copy of Matteo’s old Sentinel contract.
The security account manager was a man named Grant Bell.
Celia recognized the surname.
“Commissioner Bell?”
“His brother.”
Grant Bell’s older brother, Thomas, chaired the city redevelopment committee overseeing Harbor Light.
Celia exhaled slowly.
“That does not prove anything.”
Lorenzo nodded.
“You keep saying things I dislike.”
“You keep needing them.”
He tapped the contract.
“Matteo fired Sentinel nine days before he died.”
“Why?”
“He wrote one line in the termination memo.”
Lorenzo turned the page.
SECURITY BREACH ORIGINATED INSIDE CLIENT TEAM. TRUST COMPROMISED.
“Did Matteo think someone in your family was leaking information?”
“Possibly.”
“Who had access?”
“My father was dead by then. Me. Matteo. Our uncle Vittorio. Two senior managers.”
“Where is Vittorio now?”
“Florida.”
“Convenient.”
“He’s seventy-three and hates humidity. Nothing about it is convenient.”
Celia smiled before she could stop herself.
Lorenzo noticed.
She hated that too.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
I CAN PROVE TRAVIS WAS PAID.
An address followed.
Celia showed Lorenzo.
His expression hardened.
“No.”
She stared.
“No?”
“Meeting anonymous people alone is stupid.”
“I didn’t say alone.”
“You were thinking it.”
“You don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You moved your thumb toward the map link.”
She looked at her hand.
“Annoying.”
“Yes.”
The address belonged to a twenty-four-hour laundromat in Bridgeport.
Celia contacted Officer Meyers first.
He said he could send a plainclothes officer nearby but advised against going.
Celia went anyway.
With the officer aware.
With Mina tracking her location.
With Lorenzo across the street rather than beside her because she refused to make the witness face a man with his reputation.
The woman waiting inside the laundromat was Nora Chen.
Celia knew her.
Nora had worked procurement intake for the city until quitting without explanation two months earlier.
“You flagged Monarch,” Nora said.
“Yes.”
“That’s when they chose you.”
“Who are they?”
Nora looked toward the windows.
“Grant Bell. Maybe his brother. I never met Thomas.”
“Travis?”
“Sentinel hired him.”
“To stalk me?”
“To find out what you knew.”
Celia’s skin went cold.
The relationship abuse had begun long before Harbor Light.
That mattered.
She would not let a conspiracy rewrite Travis into a decent boyfriend who became dangerous only for money.
“He was controlling before he worked for them.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Nora looked ashamed.
“They asked for somebody close to you. Travis volunteered.”
Celia stopped breathing.
“He volunteered.”
“Yes.”
The betrayal was different from learning he had been paid.
He had turned access to her fear into a job qualification.
Nora slid a small locker key across the folding table.
“I took one original invoice packet before I quit.”
“Why?”
“Because the copies inside the case system were being changed.”
“Where?”
“Union Station. Locker 214.”
Celia did not touch the key.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because Ruth finally reported what they did.”
Nora’s eyes filled.
“I should have done it first.”
Celia took the key.
“We’re doing it now.”
Outside, she crossed toward Lorenzo.
Before she reached him, a motorcycle accelerated from the curb.
It came too close.
Lorenzo moved between Celia and the street, one hand at her shoulder, not grabbing, guiding.
The motorcycle passed.
No collision.
No attack.
Maybe coincidence.
Celia hated not knowing.
Lorenzo removed his hand immediately.
“Sorry.”
She looked at him.
“For what?”
“Touching without asking.”
The fact that he remembered made her chest ache unexpectedly.
She held up the locker key.
“We have evidence.”
“No,” he said.
“We have a key.”
She smiled.
“Look at you learning.”
At Union Station, Locker 214 contained a brown envelope.
Inside were the original Monarch invoices.
And one photograph.
Travis standing beside Grant Bell outside Celia’s apartment building.
Dated six weeks before Travis first approached her in the street.
On the back, Nora had written:
HE WAS NEVER JUST FOLLOWING YOU.
Celia turned the photograph over again.
The worse truth was not that Travis had mixed business with obsession.
May you like
It was that he had found a way to monetize the obsession he already had.
And somebody in city government had decided that made him useful.
