Chapter 13 - Shadows in the Ledger
Rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows of their Mayfair penthouse suite, warping the city lights into streaks of neon.
Elise sat cross-legged on the plush rug, surrounded by printed schematics and glowing laptops. The digital footprint of Kensington Dynamics was a labyrinth, but Elise was the minotaur.
Graham walked into the living room holding two mugs of black coffee. He stepped carefully over a stack of printed bank statements and handed her one.
“Thorne was terrified when you mentioned Croft,” Graham said, sitting on the edge of the sofa behind her. He reached out, his hand gently massaging the tension at the base of her neck.
Elise leaned into his touch, exhaling a long breath. “Croft didn’t take a sabbatical. He was erased from the company’s internal network three weeks ago. No severance, no exit interview. And right after he left, Kensington received a phantom injection of fifty million dollars from a holding company in Macau.”
“You think Croft found something in the encryption code?”
“I think Croft built the code, found out Thorne was selling backdoor access to the highest bidder, and tried to blow the whistle,” Elise said, her fingers flying across her keyboard again.
“I just pinged Croft’s last known digital signature. He’s still in London. He’s hiding.”
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Graham’s expression hardened into something lethal. “If Thorne is selling backdoor access to cybersecurity systems, he’s not just committing fraud. He’s facilitating corporate espionage on a global scale.”
Elise turned to look up at him. “We need to find Croft before Thorne’s fixers do.”
