Chapter 3 - The Forensic Accountant
The heavy glass carafe shattered with a loud, sickening crack.
Kelly didn't even scream. Her eyes rolled back into her head, her knees buckled instantly, and she collapsed onto the floor like a sack of wet flour. The syringe flew from her hand, rolling across the parquet floor and coming to a rest against the leg of Paul’s hospital bed.
The room fell dead silent, save for the heavy beating of my own heart and the sound of the rain outside.
Paul opened his eyes instantly. He looked at Kelly’s unconscious body lying on the floor, then looked up at me, his eyes wide with shock.
“Nathalie...” he wheezed out.
“We don't have time,” I said, my adrenaline surging like pure electricity through my veins.
I knelt beside Kelly, checking her neck. Her pulse was strong—she was merely knocked out cold. I took her key ring from her scrub pocket, grabbed her personal cell phone, and took the black medical notebook off the table.
I rushed to the heavy oak doors leading out to the hallway and locked them from the inside using Kelly’s key.
“Can you stand?” I asked, rushing back to Paul’s side, pulling down the thin hospital sheets.
“No...” Paul whispered, trying to move his legs. They twitched weakly, but the muscle atrophy and lingering paralytics made his lower body useless. “My legs... are dead...”
“Then we use the transport chair,” I said.
In the corner of the living room sat a heavy-duty, motorized medical transport chair that Albert’s team had used to bring Paul into the house. I wheeled it over to the edge of the bed, adjusted the footrests, and locked the wheels.
I am five-foot-five and weigh one hundred and twenty pounds. Paul was six-foot-one and, even in his emaciated state, weighed at least one hundred and sixty pounds.
I grabbed him under his arms, locking my hands behind his back.
“On three, Paul,” I gritted out through my teeth. “You have to push with your arms.”
“One... two... three!”
We strained together. Paul let out a choked gasp of agony as his weakened arm muscles flexed. I hoisted him upward, my muscles screaming under the strain, and pivoted my body with every ounce of physical strength I possessed.
We crashed onto the transport chair. The chair rocked violently, but held.
Paul slumped forward, gasping for air, sweat pouring down his pale forehead. I quickly buckled the safety harness around his chest, attached his portable oxygen cylinder to the back of the frame, and unlocked the wheels.
“Where... are we... going?” Paul rasped, clutching the armrests.
“To my office,” I said, pulling my laptop bag out from beneath the sofa where I had hidden it three days ago. “I need a secure server, a direct hardline fiber connection, and my forensic accounting software. If Albert lands in Zurich at three AM, I’m going to wipe his holding accounts clean before he even clears customs.”
I wheeled Paul toward the private study at the back of the Hunter mansion—Albert’s personal sanctuary.
Albert’s study was a massive, wood-paneled fortress guarded by a heavy oak door. I pulled Kelly’s key ring out, tried three different brass keys, and on the third try, the heavy lock clicked open.
We slipped inside. I closed the door behind us, turning the deadbolt.
The study smelled of leather, expensive whiskey, and old paper. On the far wall hung a massive, high-definition security monitor displaying six live camera feeds from around the estate grounds: the front gate, the driveway, the rear gardens, the main foyer, and the living room where Kelly lay unconscious on the floor.
I ignored the cameras and rushed straight to Albert’s heavy executive desk.
I set my laptop down, opened the lid, and plugged the power cable directly into the wall outlet. I took the silver USB drive I had retrieved from Kelly’s notebook and inserted it into my computer’s port.
My custom forensic audit software—LedgerShield Pro—instantly recognized the encrypted files on the drive.
A prompt popped up on my screen: ENTER 256-BIT DECRYPTION KEY.
I stared at the screen. My stomach plummeted.
“It’s encrypted,” I said frantically, looking back at Paul. “Paul, did you set a password for these files before you were poisoned?”
Paul shook his head weakly, his breath rattling in his throat. “No... Donald... my workshop manager... he set up... the secure vault... on my server... the key... is his... daughter’s birthdate...”
“Donald’s daughter?” I asked, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. “What’s her name? When was she born?”
“Sarah...” Paul whispered, closing his eyes as he tried to force his memory to work through the fog of sedatives. “June... tenth... twenty-sixteen...”
I rapidly typed: Sarah06102016
The screen flashed red: ACCESS DENIED. 2 REMAINING ATTEMPTS BEFORE TOTAL DATA DESTRUCTION.
My blood ran cold.
“It didn't work!” I gasped. “Paul, think! Is there a special character? A capital letter?”
Paul’s forehead was soaked in cold sweat. He shook his head frantically. “I... I don't know... Donald handled... all the IT security...”
I picked up Kelly’s phone, unlocked it using her thumbprint while she was knocked out, and dialed Donald’s private cell phone number from memory.
The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.
“Hello?” Donald’s voice answered, sounding tired and suspicious.
“Donald! It’s Nathalie!” I shouted into the phone.
“Nathalie? Where are you? Raphaël’s men were at the warehouse two hours ago asking for Paul’s master key—”
“Donald, listen to me very carefully!” I interrupted, my voice sharp as a razor. “Paul is awake! He’s with me! We have the silver USB drive from his notebook, but I need the 256-bit decryption key right now!”
There was a sudden, heavy gasp on the other end of the line. “Paul is awake? Thank God... Nathalie, the decryption key isn't Sarah’s birthdate. Sarah isn't his daughter. Sarah is his dog. His daughter’s name is Maya!”
“Maya’s birthdate!” I shouted. “What is it?!”
“October twenty-fourth, twenty-fifteen! Capital M, Maya, exclamation point at the end!”
I turned back to the screen and typed with lightning speed: Maya10242015!
I hit ENTER.
The red screen vanished. A green progress bar swept across the monitor.
DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL. ACCESSING VANGUARD LOGISTICS LLC FINANCIAL CORE.
Thousands of lines of raw banking data, wire transfers, international routing numbers, and forged signature certificates flooded onto my screen.
I leaned over the monitor, my eyes scanning the complex network of transactions like an expert surgeon operating on an open heart.
What I saw made my breath catch in my throat.
It wasn't just twelve million dollars.
Albert and Raphaël had set up an automated, recurring offshore leverage agreement through Credit Suisse Zurich. In exactly four hours—at 3:00 AM local time—when Albert’s plane landed, his biometric signature would trigger an irreversible, automated liquidation of every single asset owned by Hunter Industrial Refrigeration, transferring forty-five million dollars directly into an offshore account controlled by the international smuggling cartel Raphaël owed money to.
And sitting at the very bottom of the contract was a digital document that made my soul freeze.
It was a life insurance payout authorization form for Paul Hunter, valued at ten million dollars, payable upon death to Albert Hunter.
Attached to the authorization form was a pre-signed medical death certificate issued by Dr. Harrison—the family’s private doctor—citing "acute cardiac arrest secondary to traumatic brain injury."
They weren't just going to bankrupt Paul.
The moment the money transferred at 3:00 AM, Kelly was instructed to inject a fatal dose of potassium chloride into Paul’s IV, killing him instantly while his family was conveniently ten thousand miles away on an international flight, leaving me holding the empty bottle of sedatives and a pre-dated medical log.
“They’re going to kill you tonight, Paul,” I whispered, turning to look at my husband. “They’re going to kill you the second that plane lands.”
Suddenly, on the security wall monitor behind us, Camera 1—the front gate—flashed red.
A black sleek sedan sped up the long driveway, its headlights cutting through the heavy rain.
The car slammed to a halt right in front of the main entrance.
May you like
The driver’s side door flew open.
Hugo Hunter—Paul’s middle brother, the financial controller of the family network—stepped out into the pouring rain, holding a heavy steel crowbar in his right hand.
