Chapter 4 - The Midnight Audit
The digital clock on the dashboard read 11:45 PM as my car pulled into the deserted parking lot of the First National Bank downtown. The rain had begun to fall, drumming a steady, melancholic rhythm against the windshield.
Amy sat in the passenger seat, having insisted on coming along despite her exhaustion. "Connor, if this is a trap—if she has those blueprints—it could ruin your entire career. Your firm's reputation hangs on that bridge project."
"I know," I said, putting the car in park. "That's why I can't let her dictate the terms anymore. My mother thinks she's the smartest person in any room. She doesn't realize that in construction, we build redundancies into everything—including our security."
Armed with a court-ordered emergency search warrant authorized by a midnight judge, Sergeant Vance and two detectives met us at the bank's side entrance. The branch manager, roused from his sleep, unlocked the subterranean vault with trembling hands.
Rows of gleaming metal safety deposit boxes lined the secure room.
"Box 412," Sergeant Vance read from the warrant, holding his flashlight steady.
I stepped forward and inserted the master key the police had recovered from Teresa's purse, turning the brass tumbler alongside the bank manager's digital override. The heavy steel door clicked open, sliding out smoothly.
Inside sat a thick stack of documents, a flash drive, and a manila envelope labeled Project Titan – Proprietary Designs.
My stomach tightened. Those were indeed the structural schematics for the Riverdale Suspension Bridge—our firm's multi-million-dollar bid that was scheduled for final submission on Monday morning. If those files leaked, our company would face catastrophic lawsuits, and I would likely be blacklisted from the engineering industry forever.
Detective Miller reached inside and pulled out the flash drive, plugging it into a portable diagnostic laptop he had brought along. He typed a few commands into the terminal, watching the lines of code scroll past.
"Well?" I asked, holding my breath.
Miller tapped a key, and a smirk crossed his face. "Mr. Bradley, your mother is smart, but she's not an IT expert."
"What do you mean?"
"This flash drive doesn't contain your company's blueprints," Miller explained, turning the screen toward us. "It contains a digital mirror image of her personal offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. She downloaded them yesterday thinking she was backing up her leverage files, but she accidentally synced her entire financial trail directly to a cloud server tied to your corporate email."
I blinked in astonishment. "Are you serious?"
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"Dead serious," Miller laughed. "Not only do we have proof of the house fraud, but we also have documentation of embezzled funds totaling over $850,000 siphoned from your firm over the past three years. She didn't just steal your house; she funded a luxury lifestyle for her entire side of the family using corporate wire fraud."
Amy let out a breath she had been holding all night, a genuine smile finally reaching her eyes. "Karma works fast when you're dealing with an engineer."
