“What?”
“She resigned.”
“No.”
“That’s what Bell said.”
“She emailed me yesterday.”
Liam went still.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“What address?”
I recited it from memory.
He took out his phone and typed.
Then he looked at me.
“Bell says that’s not a Halden domain.”
I stared at him.
“Of course it is.”
“He says their addresses end in haldenfa.com.”
“I know.”
“The address you gave me ends in halden-advisory.com.”
The difference sat between us.
Small.
Almost laughably small.
A hyphen.
A word.
The kind of difference people missed every day.
The kind of difference I was paid not to miss.
“No,” I whispered.
“Maya.”
“No.”
I could see the emails in my mind.
The logo.
Claire’s signature.
The encryption notice.
The document portal.
My own password manager had autofilled the credentials.
“I spoke to her on the phone.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Was it Claire?”
“Of course it was.”
“Did you see her?”
My mouth went dry.
Not for six weeks.
The audit had begun with in-person meetings at a quiet office downtown.
Claire Donnelly, gray-haired, precise, allergic to vague answers.
Then she had moved our meetings online.
Security, she said.
Too many irregularities.
After that, audio calls only.
Then encrypted email.
“I know her voice,” I said.
Liam’s expression was careful.
“You were dealing with a firm that handles confidential investigations. Would changing an email domain ever be normal?”
“No.”
“Would you miss it?”
The question hurt more than I expected.
“No.”
But I had.
I thought of the night Ethan saw the email.
We have concerns regarding the Northline-linked disbursements and recommend immediate preservation of records.
I had assumed he was reacting to the audit.
What if he had been reacting to something else?
“Give me your phone,” I said.
“Maya—”
“Please.”
He handed it over.
My hands shook as I opened the browser.
I typed the portal address from memory.
The page loaded.
Halden’s blue-and-silver logo appeared.
Client Login.
I knew every pixel of that page.
I had used it for months.
Liam watched me.
“What are you looking for?”
I didn’t answer.
I deleted one word from the web address.
Then the hyphen.
A different site appeared.
Halden Forensic Advisory.
Same logo.
Almost the same page.
Almost.
The spacing was slightly different.
The legal notice at the bottom used a smaller font.
I felt cold.
“No.”
Liam leaned nearer.
“What?”
“The portal.”
“What about it?”
“I’ve been uploading records to the wrong portal.”
For once, my brother had no response.
I stared at the screen.
Six months of bank statements.
Internal authorization logs.
Copies of contracts.
Vendor lists.
Notes.
My questions.
My theories.
Everything I suspected.
Everything I planned to review next.
I had thought I was secretly investigating Ethan.
But someone had been reading over my shoulder the entire time.
Liam took the phone from my hand.
“Maya, listen to me. We call Ruiz. Right now.”
I barely heard him.
The email.
Yesterday’s email.
