Chapter 10: The Camera That Wasn’t Theirs
The Courage Fund offices went into lockdown.
Adrian’s private security team searched every floor, stairwell, storage room, and service corridor.
They found no intruder.
The building’s electronic entry log showed that no unauthorized person had entered or left during the previous three hours.
Whoever had taken the ledger either worked inside the building or knew how to erase the records.
Daniel examined Leah’s office.
“The window doesn’t open,” he said. “There’s no ceiling access, and the main hallway camera covers the only door.”
“Then check the footage,” Adrian replied.
Daniel pulled up the recording.
At 10:43 p.m., Leah’s office door opened by itself.
The hallway remained empty.
For three minutes, nothing moved.
Then the door closed.
Daniel replayed the video.
“It’s looped.”
“What does that mean?” Leah asked.
“Someone replaced the real footage with a clean recording from another night.”
Adrian looked toward the ceiling camera.
“Could an employee do that?”
“Not without administrator access.”
Nina Cole arrived twenty minutes later.
She wore jeans, a winter coat, and no makeup. Leah had called her at home and told her only that the office had been breached.
When Nina saw the papers on the conference table, her face changed.
“What happened?”
Leah told her about Mara, Nora’s disappearance, and the forged authorization.
Nina read the documents.
“I didn’t process this.”
“Your credentials were used to approve the payment,” Daniel said.
Nina looked at him sharply.
“Are you accusing me?”
“No one is accusing anyone,” Leah replied.
Nina turned the laptop toward herself.
She studied the access history.
“This code is mine, but I didn’t enter it.”
“Could someone have stolen your password?” Adrian asked.
“The system requires a fingerprint and facial scan.”
The room fell silent.
Nina slowly lifted her right hand.
A thin scar crossed the side of her index finger.
“Three months ago, someone broke into my apartment.”
Leah stared at her.
“You told me nothing was stolen.”
“Nothing was.”
Nina swallowed.
“But I woke up in my kitchen with a headache. I assumed I had fallen.”
“Did you go to a doctor?” Leah asked.
“No.”
Daniel examined the scar.
“Someone could have taken a fingerprint mold.”
“And the facial scan?” Adrian asked.
Nina’s eyes moved toward the ceiling.
“There are cameras everywhere.”
Leah remembered the gala.
Hundreds of photographs.
Dozens of news videos.
Her face could be recreated from thousands of public images.
Daniel opened the case management system and searched for Nora Ellis.
Her file had been altered.
The original housing address was gone.
The attorney assigned to her case had supposedly resigned two months earlier.
The listed phone number no longer worked.
Daniel clicked through the audit history.
One user had viewed Nora’s records repeatedly during the week before she disappeared.
The user account belonged to Silas Ward, director of corporate risk for Ashford Holdings.
Adrian frowned.
“Silas had no access to foundation records.”
“He does now,” Daniel said.
Eleanor stood so quickly that her chair struck the wall.
“Where is he?”
Adrian called Silas.
No answer.
He called the corporate security desk.
The night supervisor said Silas had left Ashford Tower an hour earlier.
He had not said where he was going.
Daniel pulled up a photograph from the employee database.
Silas Ward was in his late fifties with silver hair and a narrow face.
Leah had seen him at company meetings.
Daniel stared at the image.
“I know him.”
“From where?” Leah asked.
“He visited Mom’s rehabilitation clinic last year.”
Leah felt the room tilt.
“Why?”
“He said he was checking the clinic’s security contract.”
Daniel enlarged the employee photograph.
Then he placed it beside the old picture of Eleanor carrying the little girl from the burned building.
A younger man stood in the background of the photograph.
The image was blurred, but the face was recognizable.
May you like
It was Silas Ward.
And he was holding a gasoline can.
