Chapter 14 - The Midnight Blueprint
Claire returned to the Everhart corporate headquarters late that evening to find Nathaniel still in his corner office. The room was illuminated only by the faint glow of several monitors displaying encrypted system logs.
"Did she try anything?" Nathaniel asked immediately, looking up from his desk. His tie was loosened, his jacket discarded over a leather sofa.
"She tried," Claire said, walking over and placing her hands on his shoulders, gently working through the tight muscles at his neck. "She failed. But she’s desperate, Nathaniel. A desperate person does erratic things."
Nathaniel leaned back against her touch, closing his eyes for a brief second before sighing. "She isn’t working alone, Claire. The Delaware Chancery filing was too clean. The legal loopholes they exploited were written by someone who had access to our internal board archives within the last seventy-two hours."
Claire frowned. "A leak on the executive board?"
"Worse," Nathaniel said, turning the primary screen toward her. "Look at this ledger."
On the screen was an unauthorized data transfer log dated three nights ago—the exact night of the Harbor Light Children’s Gala. Someone had extracted the complete patent architecture for Everhart Global's upcoming green-energy turbine division and rerouted it to a secure server located in Singapore.
"This turbine project represents forty percent of our projected valuation for the next three years," Claire noted, her heart sinking. "If those schematics hit the open market before the international patent approval, the stock will crater by half."
"And the credentials used to authorize the download," Nathaniel said slowly, his voice laced with venom, "belonged to Marcus Vance."
Claire took a step back. "Marcus? But he’s been your family’s personal counsel for fifteen years!"
"Fifteen years of being privy to every trust fund, every bank account, and every dirty secret," Nathaniel muttered, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Christian just intercepted an encrypted wire transfer from a shell company in Geneva. Two million dollars was deposited into an offshore account registered under Marcus’s son’s name yesterday morning."
Suddenly, Claire’s private phone vibrated on the desk.
She picked it up. It was a text message from an unknown number. Attached to the message was a grainy surveillance photo taken twenty minutes ago outside the Everhart corporate building: Marcus Vance was standing beneath the shadow of a streetlamp, handing a physical black leather briefcase to Victoria Sterling.
Accompanying the image was a short message:
May you like
*The trap is already set for tomorrow’s board meeting. Check your home office safe.*
***
