Chapter 9
Then I opened the fireproof box.
The envelope containing my recovery codes was missing.
I closed the box carefully.
That was the first moment I knew Nathan was involved in more than the affair.
Not suspected.
Knew.
I slept three hours that night.
Sunday morning, I met Dana and Evan at Dana’s downtown Raleigh office.
Dana wore jeans and carried a legal pad.
She listened while I described Nathan asking for the box key.
Then she said, “We need to assume he has access to anything inside your house.”
“I want him out.”
“Soon.”
“Why not today?”
“Because right now we have evidence of unauthorized access, but not enough evidence tying him personally to the commercial theft.”
“He took the codes.”
“Probably.”
“I know he did.”
“Knowing and proving are different currencies.”
I hated lawyers for sentences like that.
I also understood why I had hired one.
Evan placed a map of access times on the table.
He had compared them with Nathan’s travel calendar and Brynn’s social-media posts.
The overlap was disturbing.
One access occurred while Nathan and Brynn had both attended a fundraiser in Durham.
Another happened from a Charlotte hotel during the same weekend Brynn claimed she was visiting her sister.
Nathan had also been in Charlotte for a banking conference.
Neither had told me they were there together.
Then Evan showed us something new.
Six of the stolen documents had embedded identifiers.
Those files later appeared in PDFs submitted by competitors.
Not exact copies.
Sections had been rewritten.
Figures had been adjusted.
But formatting anomalies and document metadata suggested the files had been used as source material.
Dana tapped her pen against the table.
“Can you prove that in court?”
“With a forensic expert, probably.”
“Probably isn’t today.”
“No.”
I leaned forward.
“Then give me something they can’t explain away.”
Evan looked at me.
“We can bait them.”
Dana immediately frowned.
“Explain before I hate the idea.”
Evan proposed creating a confidential project folder containing realistic but false information.
The file would look valuable.
It would include pricing changes, a client negotiation strategy, and a supposed revised proposal for our largest active opportunity.
Hidden markers would identify any copied version.
If the unauthorized user took it, we would know.
If the information appeared elsewhere, we would have a traceable line.
Dana considered it.
“No illegal access to their systems.”
“None.”
“No impersonation.”
“None.”
“No fabricated communication presented as coming from a real client.”
“Correct.”
She turned to me.
“What project would tempt them?”
I already knew.
“Crescent Harbor.”
Crescent Harbor was a luxury hotel group preparing to renovate fourteen properties across the Southeast.
Whitmore Studio and Rowe & Vale were finalists.
The contract could change my company.
Brynn knew that.
Nathan knew that.
Everyone close to me knew because I had been working on the proposal for three months.
We created a file named CRESCENT HARBOR—FINAL PRICING REVISION.
Inside it, we placed a believable reduction in fees.
Not enough to look absurd.
Enough to influence a competitor.
We also included three vendor concessions that did not exist.
A fake deadline.
A fictional concern from the client about lighting costs.
And one sentence about reducing our design fee by 7.4 percent.
The number was arbitrary.
That was the point.
If 7.4 appeared anywhere else, coincidence would become difficult.
At 12:37 Sunday afternoon, Evan uploaded the file.
Then we waited.
I returned home at two.
Nathan was in the garage.
He had two empty suitcases beside him.
“Going somewhere?”
May you like
He looked startled.
“I thought maybe I should stay at a hotel for a few days.”
