Chapter 16 - The Night Somebody Entered My Office
At 2:17 Saturday morning, my office alarm went off.
I woke so quickly that for one confused second I thought one of the boys was crying.
Then my phone flashed.
SECURITY ALERT.
REAR DOOR.
I sat upright.
Adrian woke beside me.
“What happened?”
“My office.”
I opened the security application.
Camera one showed the reception area.
Empty.
Camera two showed the rear hallway.
Dark.
Camera three was offline.
My pulse exploded.
“Call the police,” Adrian said.
“I am.”
I did not drive there.
Every instinct told me to.
I wanted to see.
Wanted to protect what was mine.
But I had children sleeping upstairs.
And police officers could do their jobs better without me arriving in the middle of a possible burglary.
Officers reached the office seven minutes later.
The intruder was gone.
The rear door showed signs of forced entry.
Two filing cabinets had been opened.
My desk drawers were scattered across the floor.
One computer was missing.
Not the newest computer.
Not the most expensive.
The old desktop we used for archived client administration.
By sunrise, I was standing behind police tape while an officer photographed broken wood around the doorframe.
Dennis arrived wearing sweatpants and a baseball cap.
Tasha came fifteen minutes later.
She cried when she saw the office.
I almost did too.
Then the digital-forensics consultant checked our systems.
“The stolen computer was encrypted.”
I exhaled.
“Can they access it?”
“Not easily.”
“Backups?”
“Untouched.”
“What about client data?”
“No patient medical records were stored locally. Your operational archive is backed up separately.”
One good decision.
Months earlier, I had complained about the cost of improved security.
Now I wanted to hug the consultant who had insisted on it.
Police asked whether anything else was missing.
Cash box untouched.
Tablet untouched.
Printer untouched.
A television mounted on the conference-room wall untouched.
“This wasn’t random,” Dennis said.
The officer looked at him.
“Why do you say that?”
Dennis pointed.
“They walked past things worth more money.”
The officer wrote it down.
I gave police Nolan’s threats, Kara’s information, and the current dispute.
They made no assumptions.
Neither did I.
Not publicly.
By nine, Grant called.
The boys were supposed to return at noon.
“I heard.”
“How?”
“Diane saw something on the neighborhood app.”
Of course she had.
“Keep the boys until dinner.”
“Lauren—”
“They don’t need to see the office.”
“I agree.”
There was a pause.
“Do you need anything?”
I almost said no.
Then I remembered what I was trying to teach our sons.
That asking for help was part of success too.
“Can you keep them until seven?”
“Yes.”
“And don’t tell them somebody broke in.”
“What should I say?”
“That work needed extra time.”
“Okay.”
Another pause.
“Lauren?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
Adrian stayed near me all morning without taking over.
At noon, he handed me a sandwich.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I know.”
“I won’t eat it.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
“Because in fifteen minutes you might.”
He was right.
I hated that.
At two, the police called.
A traffic camera had captured a dark SUV leaving the commercial complex.
The plate was unclear.
But another camera three blocks away had a better angle.
The SUV was registered to a rental agency.
Rented Friday afternoon.
Returned Saturday morning.
The renter’s name was not Nolan Pierce.
It was Mark Bell.
Kara’s older brother.
I stared at Maya when she told me.
“No.”
“That’s the registration record.”
“Kara sent him?”
“We don’t know.”
I felt betrayed all over again.
Maya contacted Kara’s attorney.
An hour later, Kara called from his office.
Her voice shook.
“My brother works security jobs.”
“For Crossway?”
“No.”
“For Nolan?”
Silence.
“Kara.”
“I told Mark I was scared.”
“That is not an answer.”
“He called Nolan.”
My stomach dropped.
“Why?”
“He thought he could make money fixing the problem.”
“What problem?”
“Me.”
Kara began crying.
Apparently Mark had approached Nolan after Kara was fired.
He offered to retrieve materials that might implicate Crossway.
Kara claimed she had not asked him to do it.
I believed she might be telling the truth.
I also no longer cared enough to decide.
The police would.
By Sunday afternoon, Mark Bell had been arrested.
He admitted entering my office.
According to investigators, he claimed Nolan promised him twenty thousand dollars for a computer containing archived project files.
Nolan denied everything.
But phone records showed multiple calls between them.
Crossway placed Nolan on administrative leave.
Monday morning, Sunridge removed Crossway from the bidding process.
I should have celebrated.
Instead, I stood in my damaged office looking at plywood covering the rear door.
Tasha approached quietly.
“Does this mean we won?”
“No.”
The word came easily.
Winning had once been Grant’s language for everything.
I understood now why it exhausted people.
“This means they’re out.”
“What does that mean for us?”
“We still have to earn the contract.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
I looked at the broken door.
At the files scattered across the floor.
At my employees putting the office back together.
May you like
“Yes,” I said.
“Good.”
