Chapter 5 - The Cabinet That Wasn't There
The next morning, the records cabinet had vanished. A blank stretch of painted wall occupied the place where the old archive door had been, the plaster still darker around its edges. Ridgewell's facilities map showed no room behind it.
Malcolm had spent enough years around buildings to know when a wall had been installed in a hurry. The baseboard ended three inches short. The fireproof seal had been painted over. There was a faint rectangular bruise in the carpet where heavy metal had once rested.
Eli photographed the details with his phone, then immediately lowered it. "Security can see everything on the company network."
"Then use your own cloud account."
"My phone is company-issued."
Malcolm gave him a tired look. "You are learning."
At noon, the chief security officer, Tomas Reed, summoned Malcolm to a basement office. Reed had once been a police detective, but his suit had grown softer and his eyes more careful since joining Ridgewell. He placed Malcolm's personnel file on the desk.
"You are not who your application says you are," Reed said.
"Most applications leave things out."
"Your file says you worked in municipal procurement for twenty-nine years. It does not say you audited Ridgewell's first public-sector contracts."
"That was before your time."
"Not before Lydia's."
Reed opened a second folder. Inside was a copy of Claire's report, every page marked CONFIDENTIAL — EXECUTIVE REVIEW. "She asked me to preserve this. I did not."
"Why not?"
"Because the morning after she died, Lydia told me the board knew. She said if I made noise, the company would blame me for the leak and my pension would disappear."
Reed's shame was quiet, which made it harder to dismiss. He slid a small memory card across the desk.
"I kept one thing. The access log from the night Claire sent the report."
The log showed Claire's terminal, then a restricted terminal on the twenty-ninth floor. The second terminal belonged to Lydia Crane.
Before Malcolm could speak, Reed's office door opened. Lydia stood outside with two security officers.
May you like
"Mr. Reed," she said, "you are relieved of duty."
The memory card disappeared from the desk before anyone could see who had taken it.
