Chapter 1 - The Decimal Point
Everyone assumed the threat to Raymond Saxton would eventually arrive wearing a face he recognized.
Someone ambitious.
Someone angry.
Someone who had spent years standing close enough to learn his habits and far enough away to hate him for them.
Raymond had prepared himself for betrayal in almost every form.
He had never prepared himself for a decimal point.
For six months, $3.4 million had sat inside the Saxton Group's accounts like a missing tooth no one could explain.
It wasn't one large transfer.
That would have been easy.
It wasn't a spectacular mistake.
That would have been easier.
The money had disappeared in careful increments across eighteen months, spread through properties, vendors, maintenance contracts, service invoices, supply purchases, and dozens of ordinary transactions nobody had reason to question.
Someone had understood the system.
More importantly, someone had understood Raymond.
They knew what he checked personally.
They knew what his auditors checked automatically.
And they knew exactly where neither of them bothered to look.
The dining room of the Saxton property in West Vancouver hadn't been used for dinner in months.
Folders had replaced plates.
Bank statements occupied the sideboard.
A printer now stood where wine had once been served.
Raymond sat beneath the chandelier at three in the morning with another report from another expensive forensic accountant.
Twenty-seven pages.
No answer.
He closed it.
Across the room, his longtime chief administrator, Eleanor Vale, watched him carefully.
“You should sleep.”
Raymond didn't look up.
“I did.”
“You closed your eyes for forty minutes.”
“That's sleep.”
“That is unconsciousness.”
Raymond finally raised his eyes.
Eleanor had known him since he was nineteen, which was why she was one of perhaps three people on earth who could speak to him that way.
“Anything from internal audit?” he asked.
“No.”
“Banks?”
“No irregular access.”
“Vendor review?”
“Nothing conclusive.”
Raymond leaned back.
Four months ago, his physician had given him sleeping medication.
Raymond had taken the bottle home, looked at it for twenty minutes, then emptied every tablet into the toilet.
He had stopped trusting anything prepared by other hands.
It was an irrational response.
He knew that.
Knowing didn't change it.
Because whoever was taking his money wasn't an outsider.
Outsiders did not understand the accounting architecture this well.
This was somebody inside his world.
Somebody Raymond had probably greeted that week.
Possibly that day.
“Go home, Eleanor.”
“I live in the east wing.”
“Then go thirty yards away and pretend I'm not your problem.”
“You are almost everyone's problem.”
She left anyway.
Three floors beneath Raymond, behind a security door he rarely visited, Lark Denning was trying to convince a promotional pen to produce ink.
The first one scratched uselessly.
The second wrote half a letter and died.
The third worked.
“Congratulations,” she whispered to it. “You've beaten expectations.”
Nobody heard her.
The records department closed at six.
Lark worked ten at night until four in the morning because the agency paid thirty percent more for overnight hours.
Thirty percent mattered.
Her landlord didn't accept potential.
Neither did Beaumont.
Especially Beaumont.
The private creditor had inherited the debt when Lark's father disappeared, leaving behind questions, unpaid obligations, and approximately zero useful explanations.
Every month Lark sent Beaumont money.
Every month Beaumont's office reminded her how much remained.
She had stopped imagining what she would do when the debt was gone.
Imagining things cost emotional energy.
Energy was currently a luxury.
She pulled another archival box toward her.
Q3.
Two years earlier.
Her assignment was simple: digitize physical records, compare them against the archived electronic entries, and flag inconsistencies.
It was the kind of work most people hated.
Lark liked it.
Numbers were quiet.
Numbers did not pretend to care about you.
Numbers didn't abandon families.
They didn't make promises.
They didn't lie.
Not by themselves.
At 11:43 p.m., she found the first discrepancy.
Arcline Services.
Granville Street property.
Digital transfer: $8,000.
Physical invoice: $6,400.
Lark looked at both figures.
Then looked again.
$1,600.
Not huge.
Not enough to cause alarms.
She circled it with her red pen.
At 12:17 she found another.
At 12:41, another.
By 2:00 a.m., there were twelve.
Different companies.
Different buildings.
Different values.
But the same logic.
Every digital payment exceeded the underlying physical invoice.
Never by an identical percentage.
Never by a predictable dollar amount.
Anyone looking for repetitive fraud would miss it.
But Lark wasn't looking for repetition in the amounts.
She was looking at behavior.
Someone was adding enough to steal.
Not enough to be noticed.
And they were varying the difference deliberately.
She took a blank sheet of paper.
Started calculating.
Twenty minutes later, her stomach tightened.
“This isn't clerical.”
She whispered the words because saying them made the implication real.
Someone had done this on purpose.
She gathered the flagged invoices.
Her plan was to leave them for her supervisor.
That was what temporary employees did.
They noticed things.
They documented them.
They gave them to people with permanent badges.
She still had four boxes left.
Lark returned to work.
She never heard the elevator.
She heard footsteps.
Heavy.
Measured.
Coming down the corridor.
The records level was too quiet for unexpected sounds.
Lark straightened.
The door opened.
Raymond Saxton stood there.
She had seen him once from a distance.
Everyone had.
Raymond moved through headquarters like gravity followed him.
Up close, however, he looked less like the polished photographs on financial publications and more like a man slowly being consumed by a problem.
His dark hair looked as though he'd pushed his fingers through it too many times.
The shadows beneath his eyes were severe.
His black shirt was open at the collar.
Ink disappeared beneath the fabric across his chest.
His attention went immediately to the files.
Then to the red circles.
Then to Lark's handwritten sheet.
He walked inside without introducing himself.
Lark remained seated.
Raymond picked up the top invoice.
Arcline.
$6,400.
$8,000.
His eyes sharpened.
He picked up the next.
Then another.
Then her summary.
“You found these tonight.”
Not a question.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Three hours, roughly.”
Raymond looked at the remaining boxes.
“You said there are more?”
“I said I still have four boxes.”
His gaze moved back to her.
“Why hasn't accounting seen this?”
Lark considered lying.
Something polite.
Something safe.
She chose neither.
“Because they're looking for a pattern in the stolen money.”
Raymond's expression did not change.
“And?”
“The pattern isn't in the money.”
He waited.
Lark turned the documents toward him.
“It is in what the person changes.”
She pointed.
“They never alter the original document.”
Another page.
“They only alter the digital value entered afterward.”
Another.
“And whoever is doing it never changes a transaction that crosses your manual review threshold.”
Silence.
Raymond slowly looked at her.
Lark immediately knew she'd said something important.
“How do you know my review threshold?”
“I don't.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“Because every altered transaction stays below a certain level.”
“What level?”
Lark told him.
Raymond stopped breathing for half a second.
Only half.
But Lark noticed.
That number wasn't public.
It wasn't written in the manuals she had received.
Raymond placed both hands on the desk.
“How many people know that number?”
“I wouldn't know.”
“I wasn't asking because I thought you did.”
His voice was still quiet.
That somehow made it worse.
He picked up her handwritten sheet.
“Come upstairs.”
Lark blinked.
“My shift ends at four.”
Raymond stared at her.
“My contract says overtime requires supervisor authorization.”
Something strange happened then.
For the first time, the corner of Raymond Saxton's mouth almost moved.
Almost.
“I authorize it.”
“You're not my supervisor.”
“I own the company.”
“That probably counts.”
He turned toward the door.
Lark stood and grabbed her notebook.
Then stopped.
Something on the final invoice caught her eye.
She picked it up.
A vendor number.
Seven digits.
She'd seen it earlier.
Not tonight.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere that had nothing to do with Saxton Group.
“Mr. Saxton?”
Raymond turned.
Lark looked at the number again.
Her pulse changed.
She knew where she had seen it.
On one of the old debt statements her father had left behind.
And beneath it had been a single name.
Beaumont.
Raymond watched her face.
“What?”
Lark slowly raised the invoice.
May you like
“I think the person stealing from you may be connected to the man collecting my father's debt.”
And for the first time in six months, Raymond Saxton forgot he was tired.
