Chapter 4 - Seventeen Missing Minutes.
Theo reached the disaster-recovery server through an old maintenance route that should have been disabled months earlier.
The board remained in the glass room while he worked from Adrian's office with Nolan and Mara beside him.
Adrian stood near the windows, saying very little, which everyone who knew him understood was more dangerous than shouting.
At 1:07 a.m., Theo recovered the missing seventeen minutes of video.
Nobody celebrated.
The footage showed Mara at the biometric terminal with a Facilities technician and Conrad's assistant, Lila Mercer.
Mara pressed her injured thumb to the scanner twice before the technician reset the profile.
Then Lila asked for Mara's badge and held it against a portable reader concealed beneath a leather notebook.
Nolan paused the recording.
'There.'
Mara stared at the screen.
'She copied it.'
Theo zoomed in as far as the image allowed.
The device was small enough to hide under a hand, and Lila used it for less than three seconds.
'That explains the badge,' Adrian said.
'Not the biometric.'
The video continued.
At 4:03, the technician left to answer a call in the hallway.
Lila stepped behind the console and inserted a silver flash drive.
Six minutes later, she removed it and wiped the keyboard with a tissue.
Mara covered her mouth with one hand.
'I stood three feet away from her.'
'You were filling out the reset form,' Nolan said.
'You had no reason to expect an attack on the system.'
Mara shook her head.
'I had every reason after the invoices.'
Adrian turned from the window.
'Stop blaming yourself for somebody else's preparation.'
The sentence landed harder than he intended because Mara went completely still.
For three days, every person who questioned her had found some new way to make her feel foolish for noticing too much or too late.
Adrian was the first person who had placed responsibility where it belonged.
Theo rewound the footage again.
'The flash drive is the real problem.'
'Why?' Mara asked.
'Because the reset console stores encrypted biometric templates for about fifteen minutes after a profile change.'
Nolan understood first.
'She didn't steal your fingerprint.'
Theo nodded.
'She stole the temporary token created from it.'
Mara stared at the city lights until they blurred.
The case against her had not been assembled in a single impulsive act.
Someone had planned it down to the minute.
Adrian called Helena and told her the footage was recovered.
The board chair ordered Lila Mercer located immediately.
Nolan sent security to her apartment, parking garage, and office.
They found her car in the underground level with the driver's door unlocked and the company phone left on the passenger seat.
There was no sign of Lila.
On the phone, however, they found one unsent draft message.
It contained only seven words.
I DID WHAT YOU ASKED. I'M DONE.
The recipient field was blank.
Mara read it twice.
'She was scared.'
Adrian nodded.
'Or she wanted us to think she was.'
Nolan returned to the blue-folder question.
Records B was now sealed, but the access log showed someone had entered the room at 11:31 p.m.
The badge belonged to Mara.
'Again?' she asked.
'Again,' Nolan said.
Theo checked the camera outside the archive.
The image showed a figure in a gray maintenance jacket, baseball cap low over the face, carrying a document box.
The person entered with Mara's cloned credentials and left six minutes later.
When security opened Records B, the shelf containing Mara's blue folder was empty.
Every neighboring file remained untouched.
On the bare shelf sat a single yellow sticky note.
Nolan photographed it and sent the image upstairs.
Mara read the handwriting and immediately recognized it.
'That's Conrad's.'
The note contained only a time and a place.
2:00 A.M. - OLD ARCHIVE.
May you like
Adrian looked at the clock.
They had thirty-six minutes until whoever wrote the message expected somebody to arrive.
