Chapter 8: The Continuing Belief
Mitchell’s texts to Chloe continued through the morning on the assumption that the Pine Ridge transfer had been completed.
He requested the confirmation photo of the suitcase in the hidden panel. Chloe, still under Patricia’s guidance, replied that the panel had stuck and she was waiting until she could force it without damaging the wood. The delay was plausible enough to hold him. He answered that the man with the key would arrive after dark and that the photo needed to exist before then. He still did not ask for a hospital name or a medical update on me. The only schedule that mattered to him was the suitcase’s.
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At midday Ruiz confirmed that Mitchell’s claimed audit meetings in San Jose had no corresponding entries in the calendars of the entities he had cited. A secondary check of his corporate travel authorization at Apex Vanguard showed a different internal purpose code than the one he had given at home. Subpoenas for full records were already in motion. The holds I had authorized on my company’s access points remained in place; no further remote logins under Mitchell’s credentials had been attempted since the previous afternoon.
I sat in the small conference room Patricia had secured and reviewed the preliminary inventory list. Each contract number was familiar. Each signature was mine. The altered versions on the drives would require deeper analysis, but the direction of the design was already clear: originals moved out of ordinary reach, secondary versions positioned to create a narrative, and a daughter left as the visible hand that had transported the evidence.
