Chapter 18 - THE HAND BEHIND THE CURTAIN
“How could Amanda send a wire from jail?” Daniel demanded.
“She couldn't from the device it appears to come from,” Chen replied. “We're checking the digital signature and who actually accessed the account.”
An examiner found that the order had been queued before the arrest but programmed for later execution. Someone then used a stolen administrator token to confirm it. The bank stopped the transaction after receiving the fraud alert. Its timestamp showed execution, not when Amanda personally touched a keyboard.
Daniel learned to distrust the easy explanation, even when he wanted it to be true.
Under pressure from records that contradicted her earlier claims, Amanda's lawyer approached prosecutors about a possible cooperation agreement. Amanda provided details of Northstar and Voss's operations, though investigators verified each allegation rather than accepting her account at face value.
“She says Cody designed the financial scheme,” Chen told Daniel. “The evidence also shows she participated.”
“Will she admit what she did to Lily?”
“That's for her to answer. The children don't need to hear excuses.”
The investigators traced Cody to an apartment leased by an associate in Fort Worth. When officers went there, they discovered he'd already left, but the associate turned over a storage receipt and a voice message.
Cody's message sounded panicked. “Everything's on the blue drive. If they find that, they can connect all the accounts.”
The receipt identified a locker in a self-storage facility a few miles away.
When police opened it under warrant, they found ledgers, forged identity documents, and a binder of photographs of several families.
The final page was a picture of Daniel holding newborn Lily.
Across the bottom Amanda had written, in her own hand:
May you like
HE'LL DO ANYTHING TO KEEP THEM.
