Chapter 6
By noon, my house no longer felt like mine.
Detectives moved through the rooms.
An officer photographed my office.
Another copied camera footage.
A cybercrimes investigator examined our Wi-Fi logs.
Sarah sat silently at the dining table.
I stood in my office and watched strangers search the place where I used to feel safe.
Detective Brennan came in.
“We pulled footage from the birthday party.”
“And?”
“You had a lot of people here.”
“Can you identify Michael?”
“Mrs. Carter did.”
My stomach tightened.
“Show me.”
He turned his tablet toward me.
There he was.
Gray jacket.
Dark beard.
Holding a drink.
Standing in my hallway.
I recognized him immediately.
I remembered shaking his hand.
“Who brought him?”
“That’s what we’re working on.”
Brennan swiped the screen.
Another image.
Michael near the staircase.
Another.
Michael outside the bathroom.
Then another.
Michael at the end of the hallway leading toward my office.
The timestamp showed 4:18 p.m.
The next image showed him returning three minutes later.
“What did he do in those three minutes?”
“We don’t know.”
“My office doesn’t have a camera.”
“I know.”
“Could he copy the documents that fast?”
“If he knew what he wanted.”
I felt sick.
“And the locked drawer?”
Brennan looked at me.
“Was it locked that day?”
“I always lock it.”
“Who has the key?”
“Me.”
“And the spare?”
I glanced through the doorway at Sarah.
Brennan followed my eyes.
“She says the spare was in the kitchen cabinet.”
“It was.”
“Could Mercer have known?”
“Sarah says she never told him.”
Brennan’s silence said enough.
I went to Sarah.
“Did Michael know where the spare key was?”
“No.”
“Did Jason?”
“No.”
“Did you ever mention it online?”
“No.”
“Did you text Michael about my office?”
She looked scared.
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“We talked a lot.”
“Show me.”
“What?”
“The messages.”
“Police have my phone.”
“Then tell them to show me.”
“Daniel, there are thousands.”
“I don’t care.”
Brennan stepped between us verbally before I exploded.
“We’re already extracting them.”
I looked at him.
“Can someone in my company be involved?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because whoever leaked the packet also filed an unusually specific complaint.”
I knew what he meant.
The complaint hadn’t just included stolen information.
It knew where to send it.
It knew what language would trigger a suspension.
It knew the procurement process.
“That isn’t Sarah.”
“No.”
I looked toward my office.
“So somebody used her.”
Brennan nodded.
“Possibly.”
I hated that word.
Possibly.
Everything was possibly something now.
Possibly an affair.
Possibly an extortion scheme.
Possibly corporate sabotage.
Possibly a threat to my child.
My phone rang again.
Mark.
This time I answered immediately.
“Any change?”
“Worse.”
“What happened?”
“The board called an emergency meeting.”
“When?”
“Two.”
“I’ll join remotely.”
“Daniel, I think you should come in.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
I looked at the detectives.
“It’s complicated.”
There was silence.
Then Mark lowered his voice.
“Is this connected to Sarah?”
I froze.
“How would you know that?”
Another pause.
“Daniel.”
“How would you know?”
“The anonymous complaint mentioned her.”
My blood ran cold.
“What did it say?”
“That your wife had access to confidential bid materials and shared them with a third party.”
Sarah looked up from across the room.
I put Mark on speaker.
“Shared them with who?”
“The complaint didn’t say.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated.
“What?”
“It included screenshots.”
Sarah stood.
“What screenshots?” I asked.
“Messages.”
“Between?”
“Sarah and someone named Michael.”
She went white.
“I never sent him bid information.”
Mark continued.
“One of the messages says, ‘I found it.’ Another says, ‘Daniel keeps everything in the bottom drawer.’”
I stared at Sarah.
She covered her mouth.
“Did you send those?” I asked.
Tears formed in her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
I nearly shouted.
“How do you not know?”
“Because we were talking about money!”
Brennan held out a hand.
“Mrs. Carter, think.”
She closed her eyes.
Then suddenly she whispered, “The passport.”
“What?”
“Michael told me I should hide my passport and important documents if I was planning to leave you.”
My stomach turned.
“You discussed leaving me with him too?”
She ignored that.
“I told him you kept documents in your office.”
Brennan said, “Did you tell him bottom drawer?”
“I might have.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Fantastic.”
She looked at me.
“But it wasn’t about the bid.”
“Screenshots don’t show context.”
“I know.”
Mark said quietly through the phone, “The board won’t care at first.”
I closed my eyes.
“What do they want?”
“For you to step aside temporarily.”
I felt the words physically.
“From my company?”
“From day-to-day leadership while outside counsel investigates.”
“I founded that company.”
“I know.”
“You helped me build it.”
“I know.”
“And you think I should step aside?”
“I think if you fight the board today, it looks worse.”
I stared at the floor.
My family was collapsing.
Now my company was next.
“I’ll join at two.”
I ended the call.
Sarah approached me.
“Daniel.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t send those documents.”
“I know you say that.”
“You believe me?”
I looked at her.
“I believe you may not have intentionally sent them.”
Her face fell.
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
I walked upstairs.
Emma was in our bedroom with an officer.
She was coloring.
I sat beside her.
She handed me a purple crayon.
“Daddy, make a house.”
My throat closed.
“A house?”
She nodded.
“With Mommy.”
I took the crayon.
She pointed at the paper.
“Mommy here.”
I drew a stick figure.
“Daddy here.”
I drew another.
“Emma here.”
I drew a tiny one between us.
She smiled.
“Family.”
I had to look away.
At two, I joined the board meeting from my office.
Eleven faces filled the screen.
People I had known for years.
People who had celebrated with me when we landed our first major contract.
People who had sat at my table.
Now they looked at me like I was evidence.
The chairman, Robert Gaines, spoke first.
“Daniel, this is not a judgment.”
“It feels like one.”
“It’s temporary.”
“Someone broke into my home and stole confidential material.”
“We don’t know that.”
“The police are investigating.”
“We know confidential material left your possession.”
“My wife is being extorted.”
That got their attention.
Robert frowned.
“Extorted?”
“Yes.”
I explained only what Brennan allowed me to explain.
Illegal debt.
Threats.
Michael Mercer.
Police involvement.
When I finished, nobody spoke.
Then one board member, Karen Liu, said, “This may actually increase our exposure.”
I stared at her.
“How?”
“If criminal actors targeted your household specifically because of access to company information, we need to know whether anything else was compromised.”
She was right.
I hated that she was right.
Robert leaned closer to the camera.
“We need you to take leave.”
“For how long?”
“Until outside counsel completes an initial review.”
“That could take weeks.”
“Yes.”
“My company needs me.”
“Your family needs you too.”
That silenced me.
He softened his voice.
“Daniel, go protect your daughter.”
I looked away.
The board voted.
Ten in favor.
One abstention.
Mine.
Effective immediately, I was temporarily removed from executive authority.
I closed the laptop.
For a long time, I sat there.
Then someone knocked.
I expected Brennan.
It was Sarah.
“I heard.”
“Then you shouldn’t be here.”
She stood in the doorway.
“I destroyed everything.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
“I did.”
“You opened the door.”
“To all of this.”
“Yes.”
She flinched.
“But Michael walked through it.”
She stared at me.
“That isn’t forgiveness.”
“I know.”
“It isn’t even close.”
“I know.”
“But I need the truth more than I need someone to blame right now.”
She nodded.
“I’ll tell you everything.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“No more secrets?”
“No more.”
I studied her.
“Then start with Jason.”
She froze.
“What about him?”
“Why did Michael introduce you?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not enough.”
“Daniel—”
“Michael knew you were married to me. He knew who I was. Then his brother just happened to become the man you had an affair with?”
Her face changed.
I saw the realization before she spoke.
“You think Jason was part of it.”
“I think coincidences are becoming expensive.”
Sarah sat down.
“He tried to get me away from Michael.”
“Or he made you trust him.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“You slept with him.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It means you trusted him more than you trusted me.”
She went quiet.
My phone buzzed.
Detective Brennan.
“Mr. Carter, we found something.”
“What?”
“Can you come downstairs?”
Sarah followed me.
Brennan stood beside a young cyber investigator.
He held a laptop.
“We reviewed your home network logs from the party.”
“And?”
“One unidentified device connected to your Wi-Fi.”
“That’s not unusual. Guests had the password.”
“Correct.”
He turned the screen around.
“But this device accessed a network printer in your office.”
I stared.
“My printer?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That’s what interested us.”
He clicked something.
“Your printer keeps an internal job history.”
My stomach tightened.
“Someone printed something?”
“No.”
He looked at Sarah.
“Someone scanned something.”
The room went silent.
“The pricing appendix?”
“Three pages.”
“When?”
“4:20 p.m. during the birthday party.”
Exactly when Michael was near my office.
Brennan continued.
“The scan was sent to an email address.”
“Whose?”
“We’re tracing it.”
Sarah whispered, “Michael.”
“Maybe.”
Then the cyber investigator spoke.
“There’s another issue.”
Of course there was.
“What?”
“The printer wasn’t accessed from Michael’s device.”
I frowned.
“How do you know?”
“The device identifier doesn’t match the phone we believe he carried that day.”
“So he used another phone.”
“Possibly.”
I hated that word again.
The investigator continued.
“But we found the same device connected to your home network on eight other dates.”
I stared at him.
“Eight?”
“Yes.”
“Michael was never here eight times.”
Sarah slowly stood.
Neither detective spoke.
I looked at her.
“Who was?”
Her face lost all color.
May you like
She whispered one name.
“Jason.”
