Chapter 5 - Camera Thirty-Two
Paul Denning called from a disposable phone bought at a pharmacy ninety miles north of the city.
We knew because Helena’s investigators obtained the carrier metadata within two hours.
We did not know where Paul went afterward.
We also did not know who inside Blackwood frightened him more than Richard Vale.
At noon, my father suspended Martin Shaw pending the forensic review.
Martin arrived at headquarters twenty minutes later and demanded to see us.
I expected anger.
He brought fear.
“I didn’t access those files,” he said before sitting down.
Helena closed the conference-room door. “Your credentials did.”
“I know.”
“Your laptop did.”
“I know.”
“From your home network.”
“I know.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
Martin was fifty-eight and usually looked like the human version of a well-organized briefcase. That afternoon his shirt collar was open and he had missed a patch shaving beneath his jaw.
“My laptop was in my study,” he said. “I was asleep upstairs.”
“Who had physical access?” I asked.
“My wife. Housekeeper. My son visited in the afternoon.”
“Anyone else?”
He hesitated.
That was the first lie.
Helena heard it too.
“Martin.”
He looked at her.
She said, “This is the moment where embarrassment becomes obstruction. Choose carefully.”
He exhaled.
“Richard came by Sunday.”
My father leaned forward.
“Why?”
Martin stared at the table.
“Because I’ve been advising Vale Capital privately for nine months.”
Silence.
My father’s face emptied.
Martin hurried on.
“Not against Blackwood. Regulatory work. General compliance. I disclosed outside consulting in the annual form.”
“To whom?” Helena asked.
“Corporate governance.”
“I oversee corporate governance.”
Martin’s mouth closed.
Helena smiled without humor. “Try again.”
He swallowed.
“I submitted it through the portal.”
I asked, “Who approved it?”
He looked at me.
“Your father’s office.”
My father stood.
“No.”
Martin reached into his briefcase and removed printed emails.
There it was.
Approval from an executive-office account.
Signed A. Blackwood.
My father took the page.
“I never wrote this.”
I believed him.
The syntax was wrong. My father ended internal messages with initials, never his full name. He hated the phrase “please proceed accordingly,” which appeared twice.
But the authorization had passed the system.
Someone had been impersonating the CEO’s office.
Helena looked at Martin. “You believed Alexander approved your consulting for a firm negotiating against his company?”
Martin’s shoulders sank. “Richard said the relationship was useful. He said Alexander wanted channels open.”
“And the money?”
Martin’s face reddened.
“How much?” I asked.
“Two hundred fifty thousand.”
Eli, standing against the back wall, muttered something in Spanish.
Martin snapped, “I gave legitimate advice.”
“Did you give Richard your remote-access credentials?” Helena asked.
“No.”
“Did you give him access to your home laptop?”
“No.”
“Did he use it Sunday?”
Martin stopped.
Second lie arriving.
“He asked to print something.”
There it was.
Richard had been alone in Martin’s study for perhaps five minutes.
Long enough to install remote software.
Long enough to steal credentials.
Martin had not betrayed us in the exact way we feared.
He had simply been vain, greedy, and catastrophically careless.
Sometimes the distinction mattered legally more than morally.
We sent his laptop to forensics.
By three, they found the remote-access tool hidden as a printer utility.
Richard had used Martin as a doorway.
But Paul had said the real threat was inside Blackwood.
Martin was compromised, not mastermind.
Which left us with someone else.
At four seventeen, Eli called me from hotel security.
“Come downstairs.”
“Which property?”
“The Grand.”
“What did you find?”
“Camera thirty-two.”
I was in the car before he finished.
Camera thirty-two covered the east service corridor outside the ballroom. The feed had gone dark for eight minutes during the gala.
The system logs blamed a network reset.
Eli did not believe in coincidences.
Neither did I.
He met me inside the security office with Hannah and a technician named Omar.
Omar looked as though he had personally offended technology.
“The feed wasn’t erased,” he said. “It was redirected.”
“Meaning?”
“Someone inserted an eight-minute loop from earlier in the evening. We saw an empty corridor because we were watching old footage.”
“Can you recover the real feed?”
He pointed to a monitor.
“Already did.”
The video began at 11:44.
Paul Denning emerged from the ballroom and looked both directions.
Thirty seconds later, Richard followed.
They argued.
No audio.
Richard grabbed Paul’s arm. Paul pulled away.
Then a third person entered the frame.
I leaned closer.
Hannah whispered, “Oh my God.”
Celia Frost.
Blackwood Holdings’ chief financial officer.
Celia had worked for my father for eleven years.
She attended every quarterly meeting, signed every major capital allocation, and had been one of my mentors after graduate school.
On video, Celia spoke to Paul for less than a minute.
His posture changed.
Whatever she said frightened him.
Then she handed him something small.
A key card.
Paul walked toward the loading dock.
Richard went back into the ballroom.
Celia looked directly at the camera.
Then the feed cut to the loop.
I stared at the frozen image.
Eli said quietly, “That’s your inside person.”
Maybe.
Or Celia was helping Paul escape.
“What door does the card open?” I asked.
Omar checked the time stamp and access database.
His fingers stopped.
“Executive garage.”
“Whose vehicle left?”
He searched.
One company sedan exited at 11:51 using Celia’s credential.
Celia herself remained at the gala until after midnight.
Someone else drove her car.
Paul.
Hannah said, “Maybe she helped him.”
“Maybe,” I replied.
Eli looked at me. “You don’t believe that.”
“I believe behavior before motives.”
My phone buzzed.
A message from Celia.
GRACE, WE NEED TO TALK BEFORE YOUR FATHER DOES SOMETHING IRREVERSIBLE. COME ALONE.
Below it was an address.
A church three blocks from my apartment.
Eli read over my shoulder.
“No.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You’re not going alone.”
“She specifically asked.”
“That’s why you’re not going alone.”
I looked back at the screen showing Celia handing Paul the key card.
For eleven years she had been trusted with our money.
For five years she had been trusted with me.
I wanted an explanation badly enough to make stupid decisions.
May you like
So I made a better one.
“You’re coming,” I told Eli. “But she doesn’t know it.”
