Chapter 53: Inside Man

Lucas held the phone steady.

Victoria Sterling stared at the glowing screen. She read the name pressed into the black ink of the notary seal. Mads Ellstrom.

Victoria did not raise her voice or set down her glass. Lucas could almost watch her running back through two years of deals.

"Her assistant," Victoria said quietly. "The one who answers her phone and handles half her paperwork."

"He was the inside man," Lucas said. "Cole could not have ruined the Pier Nine bid from the outside. He needed someone inside Verman Development to feed him Camilla’s filing deadlines and internal soil samples. Mads handed him the blueprints. Cole built the fake reports. They executed the sabotage together."

Victoria looked up from the phone. It was not one rogue lawyer anymore. Cole had a man inside each company.

"Call her," Victoria commanded.

Lucas already had his dialer open. He pressed Camilla’s private number and put the phone on speaker so Victoria could hear.

Camilla answered on the first ring. The low hum of a high-performance engine echoed over the line.

"I am three minutes away from your garage," Camilla said. Her tone was brisk and focused.

"Where is Mads right now?" Lucas asked.

"On the fourth floor of my building," Camilla replied. "He came in this morning to clear paperwork. Why?"

"He is Cole’s accomplice," Lucas said. He did not soften the blow. "Morgan just sent a photograph of the Delaware original. Mads notarized the Northshore guarantor page eighteen days ago. He helped Cole build the collusion trap."

The engine noise over the speaker seemed to drop away.

Lucas waited. Camilla did not panic. She never had.

"He brought me coffee two hours ago," Camilla said. Her voice had gone cold.

"He has seen every document that crossed your desk for years," Lucas said. "We need him secured before he finds out Cole has been detained."

"I am calling my head of security on my other line," Camilla said. "They will breach the fourth floor and lock him in a holding office. He does not leave the building. I am pulling into the Vertex garage now."

The call ended.

Lucas lowered the phone. He looked at Victoria.

"She is handling her side," Lucas said.

"Then let us handle ours," Victoria said.

She turned and walked toward the heavy oak doors. Lucas followed her. They stepped into the corridor and headed for the executive elevators. They rode down to the second floor in silence.

The doors slid open. The second-floor conference center was usually bustling with junior analysts and paralegals. Today, it was empty except for the gray-haired security chief standing outside room 204.

"Has he made any calls?" Victoria asked as she approached.

"No, Ms. Sterling," the security chief replied. "We confiscated his personal phone and his smart watch. He asked for outside counsel. I told him he could wait."

"Open it," Victoria ordered.

The security chief unlocked the heavy glass door and pulled it open.

Nathan Cole sat at the far end of a long mahogany table. He had poured himself a glass of water from a crystal pitcher. He looked up when Victoria and Lucas walked in. He did not look frightened. He looked like a man who believed he still held the winning hand.

"Victoria," Cole said smoothly. "This detention is illegal. You have no authority to hold me against my will."

"You are free to walk out that door, Nathan," Victoria said. She stopped at the opposite end of the table and rested her hands on the polished wood. "But the moment you cross the threshold, my security chief will hand the federal authorities a dossier detailing your two-year fraud operation in Delaware."

Cole took a slow sip of his water.

"You do not have a dossier," Cole said. He smiled. "You have a digital scan of a zoning contract and an angry young attaché. And even if you had the physical paper from Delaware, you would never hand it to the SEC. Because if you expose Northshore Remediation Group, you expose yourself."

Cole leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.

"I tied you and Camilla together," Cole stated. "A joint shell company. Financial guarantors on the same fraudulent entity. The moment you show that paper to a federal judge, you both go to prison for market collusion. You are trapped, Victoria. You are going to let me walk out of here, and you are going to wire my severance by Monday."

Victoria did not blink.

Lucas stepped forward. He pulled his smartphone from his pocket and placed it face up on the mahogany table.

He tapped the screen, opening the high-resolution photograph Morgan had sent. He slid the phone across the smooth wood. It stopped right in front of Cole’s hands.

"We have the wet-ink original, Nathan," Lucas said.

Cole looked down at the screen. He saw the lifted signatures. He saw the date.

"You built a beautiful trap," Lucas continued. He let Silver Tongue carry the words. "But you used cheap materials. You needed an inside man to feed you Camilla’s schedules and guarantee she signed the paperwork blind."

Cole stared at the screen. The smug confidence began to drain from his face.

"You used Mads Ellstrom," Lucas said.

[Target Vulnerability Exposed.]

[The target’s primary defense mechanism has been dismantled.]

"Camilla’s security team is dragging him into a locked room right now," Lucas said. He did not break eye contact with the lawyer. "Mads is an assistant. He does not have your nerve. When Camilla sits across from him and threatens to ruin his life, how long do you think he holds out? Will he protect you, Nathan? Or will he sign a full confession outlining every conversation you two had over the last two years?"

Cole did not answer. His breathing grew shallow.

"The federal authorities do not care about a collusion document if they have a signed confession proving the signatures were forged," Victoria said. Her voice was quiet. "Your dead-man’s switch is useless. You have nothing left."

Cole looked at the phone, then at Victoria. Lucas watched him work it through. The exit plan was gone. So was the leverage.

"He came to me," Cole whispered. His voice was hollow.

Victoria tilted her head. "Excuse me?"

"Mads," Cole said, looking up. He was already moving the blame. "Two years ago. He found out I was the outside counsel on the Pier Nine bid. He wanted a cut of the commission. He offered to spike Camilla’s soil samples if I set up the shell company to handle the fallout."

"So you built all of this because an assistant asked you to," Victoria said.

"He was ambitious," Cole defended himself. "And he had access to her most secure files. He opened her dormant holding accounts for her years ago. He knew every blind spot in her accounting."

Lucas went very still.

The words echoed in the quiet conference room.

He opened her dormant holding accounts.

Lucas activated his Micro-Motive Perception. He looked at Cole, searching for the lie. There was no lie. Cole was offering up his accomplice to save himself.

[Strategic Anomaly Detected.]

[The accomplice possesses unmonitored access to the target’s offshore financial infrastructure.]

Lucas pulled his phone back across the table.

"The penalty money," Lucas said softly.

Victoria turned her head. "What?"

"The expansion penalty," Lucas said. "The Vertex money that landed in a dormant Verman account."

He did not say the rest out loud. He was the one who had changed the numbers on page forty-seven. He had parked that money in the one place he thought nobody would touch.

"Morgan is still tracing that," Victoria said. "Camilla thinks a bank misrouted it."

"Mads won’t think that," Lucas said. "He has seen every page that came through her office. He will know exactly where that money is sitting. And if he opened that account, he may still be able to sign on it."

Victoria’s dark eyes widened.

Before she could speak, the heavy glass door of the conference room swung open.

Camilla Verman stepped inside.

She walked past the security chief and straight into the room. She did not look at Cole. She looked directly at Lucas.

Her face was white.

"Lucas," Camilla said. Her voice was very tight.

"Did your security team get him?" Lucas asked.

"My security team breached the fourth floor," Camilla stated. She stopped next to Victoria. "His office was empty. His laptop was wiped clean. He cleared out his desk and walked out the service elevator twenty minutes ago."

Victoria gripped the edge of the table. "He ran."

"He did more than run," Camilla said. She looked at Victoria, then back at Lucas. "My private banker called while I was pulling into your garage. The Vertex money in my dormant account."

"It’s gone," Lucas finished for her.

"Wired out fifteen minutes ago to an account my bank has never seen," Camilla said. "He took the money. He took everything. And he vanished."