Chapter 8 - The Man in the Kitchen Jacket
The man kept his face angled away from the camera.
He knew where it was.
That bothered me more than the jacket.
Tasha checked staffing records. No temp worker matched his height or build.
Security found the jacket later in a linen bin.
Nothing in the pockets.
No fingerprints we could use.
Ethan wanted to call the police.
I agreed once we realized the man had entered a restricted corridor.
The officer who took the report was careful not to overpromise. Trespassing, possible impersonation, suspicious access. Enough to document. Not enough to invent a conspiracy.
Then Charles called.
“We found the spoofed domain payment.”
“Whose card?”
“Prepaid. But the purchase originated from a network used at one of our branch offices.”
Lauren’s office.
I closed my eyes.
“Does that mean Lauren did it?”
“No. It means someone on that network did.”
Charles paused.
“Maya, there’s more. One of our internal administrators accessed your committee profile fourteen times in the past month.”
“Who?”
“Lauren’s regional director. Mark Delaney.”
I knew the name. He was the manager Lauren had mentioned indirectly - the one sponsoring her for partner.
Ethan looked across the bar at me.
“Could Delaney be feeding her information?”
“Maybe.”
Charles sounded tired. “He’s been placed on administrative leave pending review.”
My phone buzzed while he was speaking.
Unknown number.
I opened the message.
A photograph filled the screen.
It was me in high school, standing behind the register of the grocery store where I used to work.
Across the bottom, someone had typed:
SOME PEOPLE SHOULD REMEMBER WHERE THEY CAME FROM.
A second message arrived.
THIS TIME, DON’T EMBARRASS LAUREN.
Ethan read it over my shoulder.
His face hardened.
I stared at the old photograph.
May you like
Only a handful of people had ever had a copy.
One of them was Lauren.
