Chapter 4: # CHAPTER 4: PORT FILES
Rachel Ortiz executed the warrant by the following morning.
The camera unit came out of the utility box intact.
The memory card went to the department's digital forensics team.
Rachel called Lorenzo at noon.
"We have footage."
"When can I see it?"
"You can't.
Not yet.
It's active evidence."
"Rachel—"
"I will tell you what is relevant when I am legally able to." Her voice was flat.
"What I can tell you right now is that the footage contains a woman and a large black dog.
Thursday afternoon.
Three seventeen p.m."
Lorenzo sat down.
"Her face?"
"Partially obscured.
We're enhancing."
"The collar."
A pause.
"We can see the collar."
"The ring."
"Mr.
DeLuca.
I will call you when I have something I can share." She paused again, and when she spoke next her voice had dropped slightly.
"The footage is real.
Something is there.
Let us do this right."
She hung up.
Lorenzo set his phone on the desk and looked at the silver-framed photograph.
Then he opened Isabella's old tablet.
He had looked at it once after the funeral and closed it again.
Too much of her in the screen brightness, the saved passwords, the half-finished grocery list still open in a notes app.
Today he opened it differently.
Not looking for her.
Looking for what she had found.
The partially synced email thread was still there.
Subject line: PORT FILES.
Body text only — the attachments had never completed their sync before the tablet went dormant.
*If numbers are right, Vincent has been moving money through North Pier vendors for at least 18 months.
Need independent review before telling R.
Too close to home.*
Lorenzo read it three times.
R.
Him.
She hadn't told him because Vincent Moreau was like a brother.
Twenty-two years.
Same neighborhood.
Same schools.
The man who stood at the graveside and told Lorenzo he had to keep living.
*Too close to home.*
She had been protecting him from the information.
Waiting until she had proof he couldn't argue with.
His hands were very still on the desk.
"Mason."
Mason appeared in the doorway within seconds.
"Get me everything on North Pier Logistics vendor payments for the last twenty-four months.
Quietly.
Nothing through executive systems."
Mason looked at him.
"You think Vincent is in the vendor files."
"I think Isabella did."
"That's not the same thing."
"No." Lorenzo looked at the tablet screen.
"But she's been right about everything so far."
Mason left without another word.
The North Pier files took three hours to pull through back channels.
An outside accountant Lorenzo trusted — a woman named Grace Holt who had audited two of his smaller companies and had never once told him what he wanted to hear — came to the estate that evening.
She sat at the dining table with the files spread in front of her and didn't speak for forty minutes.
Lorenzo waited.
Finally she looked up.
"How much do you want to know?"
"Everything."
"Some of these vendor contracts are legitimate."
"And the rest?"
Grace turned a page.
"Inflated invoices.
Subcontractors billing for work that either wasn't done or was done at half the quoted cost.
The difference — roughly nine point four million over eighteen months — flows through shell entities." She slid a page across the table.
"These names.
Do any of them mean anything to you?"
Lorenzo looked.
Three company names.
None he recognized immediately.
Then one.
Castellan Advisory Group.
He looked up.
"Vincent's brother-in-law runs a consulting firm."
"Did you know it was called Castellan?"
"No."
Grace held his gaze.
"Then you didn't approve these payments knowingly."
"No."
She nodded slowly.
"That matters.
Legally."
Lorenzo pushed back from the table.
Walked to the window.
The grounds were dark now, the garden invisible beyond the glass.
Vincent had been stealing from him for a year and a half.
And Isabella had found it.
And someone had put her in a car and sent it over a ravine.
He turned around.
"Does Rachel Ortiz need to see this?"
"Yes," Grace said.
"Tonight."
Rachel arrived at ten p.m.
She looked at the files for twenty minutes.
Then she looked at Lorenzo.
"You understand that financial fraud and what happened to Isabella may be connected, but I cannot treat them as the same investigation yet."
"I understand."
"If Vincent Moreau is involved in what happened to your wife, I need evidence that links him to the crash.
Not just the money."
"I know."
"Do not contact him."
Lorenzo said nothing.
"Mr.
DeLuca."
"I heard you."
She gathered the files.
At the door she stopped.
"The camera footage enhancement came back an hour ago." She didn't turn around.
"The woman's eyes are visible for less than one second.
My forensic specialist says the match to Isabella's prior identification photographs is strong enough to pursue."
Lorenzo's chest tightened.
"How strong?"
Rachel turned then.
Her expression was careful and precise.
"Strong enough that I've already requested a DNA comparison using her prior medical records." She paused.
"We'll know in forty-eight hours whether the bl\*\*d at the warehouse is hers."
She left.
Lorenzo stood in the empty hallway.
Forty-eight hours.
His phone buzzed.
Mason.
A text, three words.
May you like
*Found the dentist.*
* * *
