Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Had Disappeared
Claire met them outside her office.
One look at Lydia’s face erased every question she had prepared.
“Inside,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, criminal defense attorney Elise Porter joined them by video. Claire introduced her, then left the office so Graham and Lydia could speak privately.
Elise listened without interrupting.
When Lydia finished, the attorney asked her to start again.
This time, slowly.
Dates. Names. Exact words.
“Don’t make yourself sound better,” Elise said. “Don’t make yourself sound worse. Tell me what happened.”
Lydia described the preliminary review, the changed permissions, the threats.
Graham supplied the forged invoice and the money Sebastian had offered.
“Did either of you take company records?”
“No,” Lydia said. “I have emails in my personal inbox where he asked me to work from home. And the messages he sent me directly.”
“Preserve those. Don’t delete anything. Don’t contact coworkers to gather material. We’ll handle the requests.”
Graham showed her the photograph of his shop.
Elise’s expression sharpened.
“Who sent that?”
“The same number as the first threat.”
She instructed them to save the original messages and prepare a written account while their memories were fresh. Then she arranged for them to speak with investigators about both the intimidation and the suspected fraud.
There were no dramatic promises.
No assurance that everything would be resolved by morning.
Strangely, Graham trusted her more for that.
Before ending the call, Elise asked Lydia whether anyone else had raised concerns about the vendors.
Lydia hesitated.
“There was a systems analyst. Nora Chen.”
“What happened to her?”
“She left before I started. Sebastian said she’d had performance issues.”
“Did you ever speak to her?”
“Once. She came back for a box of personal things.”
Lydia remembered the encounter too clearly now.
Nora standing outside the elevators with a cardboard box.
A security guard beside her.
The awkward introduction.
And Nora’s strange question.
Had Lydia checked the apartments herself?
“At the time, I thought she meant our office relocation,” Lydia said.
“Do you have contact information?”
“No. But there’s something else.”
She opened an old notebook from her purse.
Inside the back cover, beneath a grocery list, was a telephone number.
Nora had written it there when the guard turned away.
Lydia had never called.
Graham watched shame move across his wife’s face.
“I thought she was bitter about losing her job.”
Elise took down the number.
“That may matter later. Right now, we move forward.”
They stayed at Claire’s that evening.
Graham called his foreman, Luis, and told him there was a business identity problem. Any unusual visitors, payment requests, or deliveries were to be referred to him.
Luis was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “How bad?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Okay. Tell me when you do.”
That simple answer nearly broke Graham.
After dinner, Lydia sat alone at Claire’s kitchen table, making a timeline.
Graham stood in the doorway.
“You should sleep.”
“I need to finish this.”
“You’ve written the same date three times.”
She stared at the page.
“I keep thinking about Nora.”
“What about her?”
“She tried to warn me. I decided she was the kind of person who couldn’t handle success.”
Graham pulled out the chair opposite her.
Lydia looked exhausted, stripped of the polished confidence she had worn when she first announced the new job.
“I wanted it so badly,” she said. “The title. The salary. Mom spent her whole life being called dependable while other people got promoted. I thought I’d finally done something she would have been proud of.”
“She was proud of you when you were organizing insurance files.”
“I know that now.”
“She was proud of you then.”
Lydia pressed the pen between her palms.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Elise called.
She had reached Nora.
The former analyst was willing to speak, through her own attorney.
But she had asked one question before agreeing.
Had Lydia signed the final compliance certificate?
Lydia shook her head immediately.
“No. Only the preliminary review.”
Graham relayed the answer.
Elise was quiet.
Then she said, “There’s a final certificate in the documents Nora retained from her last authorized review.”
Lydia’s face emptied.
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s dated three days ago.”
“I never saw it.”
“And it carries your signature.”
Outside, a car slowed in front of Claire’s house.
Graham rose from his chair.
The headlights passed across the kitchen windows.
May you like
Then continued down the street.
He remained standing long after they disappeared.
