Chapter 6: The Second Name
I set my cup down.
"Tell me exactly what your brother said."
David looked up.
Something shifted in his expression — surprise, maybe, that I was still in the room and still listening.
"Three years of transfers," he said.
"Quarterly.
Always just under the reporting threshold.
The account is registered to a shell company in the Caymans." He paused.
"The login credentials match mine.
The IP addresses are from this house."
"From this house," I repeated.
"That's what he said."
I thought about the study.
The desk.
The laptop David kept there that he used for company work — the one he left open, logged in, for days at a time because he never imagined anyone in his own home would use it.
"Who else had access to that laptop?" I said.
"Nobody.
Just me." He stopped.
"And you."
We looked at each other across the kitchen table.
"I didn't touch your laptop," I said.
"I'm not saying you did."
"Then say what you're saying."
He pressed his hands flat on the table.
"Someone used my credentials from this IP address.
If it wasn't me and it wasn't you, then someone else was in this house.
Regularly.
For three years."
The silence that followed had a different quality than the silences from the night before.
This one wasn't about power.
It was about something neither of us had expected.
"Who has a key to this house?" I said.
David opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"David.
Who has a key?"
"My brother," he said slowly.
"My assistant.
And—" He stopped.
"And who?"
He stood up from the table and walked to the window.
Stood there with his back to me.
"Gerald," he said.
Gerald.
The man who had laughed the loudest.
The man who had been first to the door when the phones started chiming.
The man who had said, very carefully, *I don't think I want to be a witness to any of it.*
"Gerald has had a key since we moved in," David said.
"He used to water the plants when we traveled.
I never asked for it back."
I thought about Gerald's face the night before.
The way he'd set his glass down so carefully.
The way he'd left without looking at me.
"Call your brother back," I said.
"Ask him which specific transactions are flagged.
Ask him for the dates."
"Why?"
"Because if Gerald was in this house, there will be other records.
Entry logs from the security system.
I had it upgraded eight months ago.
Every door, every window, timestamped."
David turned from the window.
"You have logs."
"I have fourteen months of logs," I said.
"I never looked at them because I had no reason to.
Until now."
I went to the study.
David followed.
I opened my laptop — mine, password-protected, never shared — and pulled up the security system dashboard.
The logs loaded in columns.
Date, time, entry point, access method.
I filtered by the dates David's brother had mentioned.
The entries came up clean for my credentials and David's.
But on eleven separate dates over the past fourteen months, the rear garden door had been accessed with a physical key between the hours of nine a.m.
and noon — always on days when both David and I were confirmed away from the property.
I had a conference in Seattle.
David had a board retreat.
A long weekend we'd taken to visit his mother.
Eleven entries.
No alarm triggered.
No camera flag, because the rear garden camera had been angled down — something I had noticed six months ago and assumed was wind.
I turned the laptop so David could see the screen.
He read the dates.
His face went very still.
"He knew our schedule," David said.
"He's been your closest colleague for nine years," I said.
"He knew everything."
David pulled out his phone.
His hand was not steady.
"I'm calling the board's legal team directly," he said.
"Not my brother.
The legal team."
"Before you do," I said, "you should know something."
He looked at me.
"The security footage from last night — the footage attached to your termination order — it covers the full evening.
Every room that has a camera." I paused.
"Including the moment Gerald arrived.
And the moment he left.
And the conversation he had on his phone in the front hallway while you were pouring drinks in the living room."
David stared at me.
"You have audio," he said.
"The system records audio in common areas.
It's disclosed in the home security agreement.
Which you also signed without reading."
He sat down in the desk chair.
Slowly.
Like a man who had just discovered the floor was lower than he remembered.
"Gerald set me up," he said.
"He's been doing it for three years.
And last night he came here to watch it land."
"That's what the evidence suggests," I said.
"Why?" His voice came out raw.
"Why would he—"
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I think the board's legal team will find out very quickly once they have the security logs and the audio."
David looked at the laptop screen.
At the eleven timestamps.
At the rear garden door, opening and closing on days when no one should have been home.
"I need your help," he said.
It was the first time in years he had said those words to me and meant them.
I looked at him for a long moment.
"I'll send the logs to the board's legal team myself," I said.
"Through my own attorney.
Independently verified."
"Why independently?"
"Because whatever Gerald did, David, you still hit me last night in front of eight people." I closed the laptop.
"I'll help clear your name on the fraud.
That's the right thing to do.
But don't mistake that for anything else."
He nodded.
May you like
Just once.
I picked up my phone and called my attorney.
