Chapter 6 - ALICIA’S PASSWORD
Alicia did not deny it.
That frightened me more than denial would have.
She sat slowly in the chair opposite my desk and pressed both hands against her knees.
Helen remained by the door.
Miriam stood near the window.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Finally I asked, “Why?”
Alicia looked at me.
“I did not create that reservation.”
“The IP address came from your house.”
“I know what an IP address is.”
“Then explain it.”
Her mouth trembled.
“My nephew has been staying with me.”
I almost closed my eyes.
The answer sounded exactly like the kind of answer guilty people invent when they need another person between themselves and evidence.
“What is his name?” Miriam asked.
“Evan.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-four.”
“What does he do?”
Alicia hesitated.
“He works in IT.”
Helen muttered something under her breath.
I sat down.
“Where?”
“He used to work for a managed services contractor.”
“Which contractor?”
Alicia looked at me with pain in her eyes.
“Northstar Systems.”
The name hit immediately.
Northstar maintained part of Mercer Home Systems’ network infrastructure two years earlier.
We ended the contract after moving more operations in-house.
“Did Evan have credentials?” I asked.
“Not current ones.”
“Did he ever?”
“Yes.”
Helen stepped farther into the room.
“Alicia, why was this never disclosed?”
“He wasn’t assigned to Mercer.”
“That is not what she asked.”
Alicia looked at Helen.
“Because there was nothing to disclose.”
I thought of the shoe in my closet.
“Is Evan a size eleven?”
Alicia’s eyes closed.
That was my answer.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing unusual.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“He made coffee.”
“He complained about my terrible internet.”
“He said he had a job interview.”
“What time did he leave?”
“Around ten.”
“Did he come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were home last night.”
Alicia looked at the floor.
“No.”
The room went still.
“You lied to me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Where were you?”
She looked at Miriam.
Then at Helen.
Then back at me.
“With David.”
I felt something inside me sink.
Miriam’s voice was sharp.
“Doing what?”
“Trying to get him to stop.”
“Stop what?”
Alicia began to cry silently.
I had seen her cry twice in eighteen years.
Once when her mother died.
Once when we nearly lost the company during the recession.
She wiped her face angrily.
“David came to me four months ago.”
“He said he had found irregular payments.”
“That part you know.”
“He also told me he thought Daniel was involved.”
“I told him to go to you.”
“He said he couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel had something on him.”
“What?”
“A loan.”
I frowned.
“David borrowed money from Daniel?”
“No.”
“David borrowed company money years ago.”
Helen stared at her.
“That makes no sense.”
Alicia shook her head.
“It was during the recession.”
“His wife needed surgery.”
“He was desperate.”
“He moved forty thousand dollars from a dormant vendor account and put it back six weeks later.”
My throat tightened.
“Did you know?”
“Yes.”
That single word hurt more than I expected.
“You knew an employee stole from my company and said nothing?”
“He paid it back.”
“That is not the point.”
“I know.”
“No, Alicia, you do not know.”
My voice rose for the first time.
“You decided what I was allowed to know about my own company.”
“I was trying to protect him.”
“And who was protecting me?”
She flinched.
No one answered.
I forced myself to sit back.
“What did Daniel do with that information?”
“Blackmailed him.”
“For how long?”
“At least a year.”
There was a brief lull in my office, and the quiet made the Northstar credential report feel louder than any accusation.
I kept circling the same question: how far Evan's access had reached.
One fact kept pulling me back: archived credentials touched Harbor 2017.
I opened a notebook and drew a line down the center of the page.
On the left I wrote what I knew.
On the right I wrote what I only suspected.
The second column was much longer.
That embarrassed me at first.
Then I realized the distinction was exactly what Daniel and Thomas never made when it benefited them.
They treated assumptions as truth when assumptions created leverage.
I could not fight that by becoming equally careless.
Helen added timestamps from the system logs.
Miriam added questions that would survive cross-examination.
Martin added money trails that did not care who felt offended by them.
Slowly, suspicion became a map instead of a fog.
The map pointed toward one lesson: the oldest records were suddenly the most dangerous.
I underlined that sentence twice.
It was not inspirational.
It was operational.
And I needed operational truths more than comforting ones.
“To do what?”
“Approve vendors.”
“Move money.”
“Alter reports.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“The $184,000?”
Alicia nodded.
“Some of it.”
“The $1.8 million loan?”
Her head snapped up.
“What loan?”
I watched her carefully.
She looked genuinely confused.
Miriam handed her a photocopy of page seven.
Alicia read it.
Her face drained.
“This is bigger than David told me.”
“Where did you meet him last night?”
“At a diner near Route 60.”
“What time?”
“Eight thirty.”
“Why?”
“He called me in a panic.”
“He said Daniel was forcing everything to happen early.”
“What was supposed to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alicia.”
“I swear.”
She leaned forward.
“He kept saying, ‘The cleanup is tonight.’”
Rebecca had used the same word.
Cleanup.
My pulse quickened.
“What else?”
“He said he had sent the board memo because he needed to keep you away from company systems until he could preserve evidence.”
Helen laughed in disbelief.
“He tried to suspend her to protect her?”
“That is what he claimed.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
Alicia looked at me.
“That’s why I went to meet him.”
“I told him if he was involved, he had to confess.”
“He said he would.”
“Then his phone rang.”
“Who called?”
“I don’t know.”
“He listened for maybe thirty seconds.”
“Then he stood up and said I had to leave.”
“What time?”
“About nine.”
The same time someone was in my study.
“Did he leave too?”
“No.”
“He stayed at the table.”
“Can the diner verify that?” Miriam asked.
“There are cameras everywhere.”
That was the first good fact we had heard in ten minutes.
Helen’s phone rang.
She answered, listened, and looked at me.
“Our cyber team found the source of the fake email.”
“Where?”
“It was created using an archived credential set from the Northstar migration.”
Everyone looked at Alicia.
She whispered, “Evan.”
Helen nodded grimly.
“The same credential set was used to access the old backup directory yesterday afternoon.”
My fireproof box had contained a physical backup.
Someone had also been searching the archived digital backups.
“What were they looking for?” I asked.
Helen turned to the report.
“One folder was accessed repeatedly.”
“Which folder?”
She read the name.
“HARBOR_2017.”
I frowned.
I did not remember it.
Alicia did.
She stood so quickly the chair rolled backward.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“What is Harbor 2017?”
She stared at me with horror.
May you like
“That was the year Daniel first started doing contract work for us.”
