Chapter 3 - The Broken Alibi
"Don't turn around," I said, my voice dropping into the steady, controlled register I used when briefing a team under fire.
David’s hands began to shake violently. He dropped his coffee cup, the dark liquid splashing across the table and staining his sleeve. "They found me. How did they find me this fast? I wiped my phone's location services before I left the apartment!"
"They didn't track your phone, David. They tracked your car's toll tag, or they had a tail on you the moment you cleared out your desk," I said, my eyes flicking to the reflection in the front window. The two men in suits weren't police officers; their posture was too rigid, their jackets pulled back slightly to accommodate shoulder holsters under private security licenses. They were corporate fixers—the kind of men Martin Voss kept on retainer to handle "sensitive disputes" that never made it onto a police blotter.
"Amelia, please," David whispered, his breath hitching as panic threatened to overwhelm him. "If they take that folder back, I'm a dead man. Preston won't let me walk out of here alive."
I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the manila folder, slipped it securely inside my leather briefcase, and snapped the brass latches shut with a sharp click.
"Stand up," I commanded, sliding out of the booth on the opposite side.
"What? Where are we going?"
"The kitchen exit. Move."
We slipped through the narrow swinging doors behind the counter just as one of the security guards shouted across the room. The barista dropped a milk pitcher in surprise, but I didn't look back. We bolted down a narrow, grease-slicked hallway, shoved open a heavy metal fire exit, and burst out into a grey, rain-slicked alleyway behind the coffee shop.
The cold air hit us like a physical blow. A delivery van was idling by the dumpster, its hazard lights blinking. Without missing a beat, I pulled open the passenger door of my own sedan parked three slots down, shoved David into the passenger seat, and slammed the door shut before jogging around to the driver's side.
I threw the car into reverse, tires screeching against the wet asphalt, and whipped out of the alley just as the two suits rounded the corner of the building.
David was hyperventilating, clutching his chest as I merged into the afternoon traffic on Fifth Avenue. "They're going to kill me," he muttered over and over, staring frantically out the rear window. "They're going to pin the entire East District embezzlement scheme on me and make it look like a suicide."
"They won't do anything as long as we control the ledger," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the road, my grip on the steering wheel white-knuckled. "Calm down, David. You're safe in this car. But we need to look at what's actually inside this folder, because your timeline doesn't match the story you just told me."
David blinked, wiping sweat from his forehead. "What do you mean?"
"You said the East District municipal grant was embezzled last year, and the materials were sold off to cover Hale Enterprises' losses," I said, taking a sharp left turn toward my apartment downtown. "I reviewed the city council's infrastructure disbursements for that exact project three weeks ago while prepping my initial financial disclosures. The funds didn't go to Hale Enterprises' general account. They were routed through a primary contractor called Meridian Logistics."
David frowned, his panic momentarily giving way to professional confusion. "Meridian Logistics was just a front company we set up to obscure the paper trail."
"No, it wasn't," I said, turning my head to look him in the eye at a red light. "Meridian Logistics was incorporated five years ago—long before you joined Hale Enterprises as CFO. And according to the state registry, its primary shareholder isn't Preston Hale, and it isn't Vivian. It's registered under a maiden name: Margaret Vance."
The color completely drained from David's face. He stopped breathing.
"Who the hell is Margaret Vance?" David whispered.
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"That," I said, shifting the car back into drive as the light turned green, "was Preston’s mother’s name before she married Arthur Hale. Which means this entire fraud scheme didn't start fourteen months ago to cover a corporate downturn. It's been running for over a decade—and it was built to hide something much bigger than missing development grants."
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