Chapter 3 - The Account That Was Still Alive
The email changed everything.
A dead woman had just threatened me.
Ortiz had the house network preserved before anyone touched another device.
Vanessa left with her attorney forty minutes later.
She did not say goodbye to Noah or Lily.
That told me more than any speech could have.
The next morning, Carter Holdings suspended my access to several internal systems "pending review."
Marcus called before I could call him.
"Daniel, the board is concerned."
"About my dead sister?"
"I heard you found something upsetting."
"You signed Claire's death certificate."
His voice softened into the same tone he used when my father was dying.
"There are details you don't understand."
"I'm getting tired of hearing that."
"Claire had an accident."
"Where?"
"Daniel—"
"Where did she die?"
By noon, my attorney, Rachel Kim, had joined Ortiz and a digital forensic analyst named Peter Sloan in my office.
Peter traced the new email.
It had not come from some distant hacker.
It had been sent through Carter Holdings' internal mail relay.
"Meaning?" I asked.
"Meaning whoever sent it had valid corporate access."
He then reviewed the older messages.
Claire's account had been used regularly for thirteen months.
Not only for emails to me.
One document carried Claire's electronic signature eight months after she died.
"How much money?"
Peter pulled transaction reports.
"We need time."
"Estimate."
Rachel said, "Daniel—"
"Estimate."
"At least nine hundred thousand dollars touched approvals under Claire's credentials. Maybe more."
Claire had spent years building a reputation for being strict, difficult, impossible to pressure.
Now someone had turned that reputation into a mask.
Peter opened one more log.
"There's something else."
He showed me the recovery email attached to Claire's corporate account.
It had been changed two days after her death.
New recovery address:
My wife.
Then Rachel looked at the transaction list and pointed to one company name.
"Who is Northstar Medical Advisory?"
I stared at it.
May you like
"Marcus Hale sits on its board."
Claire's dead account had approved $1.2 million to a company connected to the doctor who certified her death.
