Chapter 4 - THE CASE IN THE RAINOmar caught the courier at the curb while Grace called the police. The man dropped the black case and raised both hands.
"I'm a delivery driver," he kept saying. "I didn't steal anything."
He produced a pickup order with a company seal. The case was addressed to Eastline Advisory, a business Grace had searched without finding a real office. Inside lay a backup drive and forty-eight paper invoices. The police secured the case.
"Who gave it to you?" Omar asked.
"A woman on the loading dock. Blonde. Green coat. She said it was urgent."
Victoria owned three green coats. That proved nothing, Grace reminded herself. What mattered was who signed the pickup form: P. VOSS.
Peter leaned against a pillar. "I was told it was an off-site compliance archive."
"You signed away our only records without checking?" Adrián asked.
"I trusted Victoria."
Grace heard the old excuse, the one that always meant someone lower down would pay. She also saw genuine fear in Peter's eyes. Fear was not innocence.
They had the forensic team make an image of the drive. On its surface the invoices seemed ordinary: meals delivered to three youth shelters, beds installed at a transitional-housing site, transportation for teenagers in job training. Every invoice carried a receipt signature.
Grace knew one of those signatures. Paula Harris ran the Rosebridge Youth Center. The name appeared below a receipt for sixty beds.
Grace called Paula on speaker. "Did you accept sixty beds last month?"
There was a pause. "Grace, our kids are sleeping on borrowed gym mats. We haven't received a bed since February."
"Did you sign for them?"
"I was in surgery that day."
Paula's voice shook when Grace said the amount: $312,000.
"There are families sleeping in cars while somebody bills us for furniture," Paula whispered. "Come see what your foundation has actually funded."
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Then she said someone had already called the center that morning, warning her not to let Grace through the door.
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