Julian’s face was a pale mask under the faint glow of the Apex Infrastructure parking garage lights. We stood by my old sedan, the air thick with the smell of exhaust and anxiety.
“Krenshaw’s office is on the 27th floor,” Julian whispered, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag. “He keeps a separate, locked cabinet for his personal files. Offline stuff.”
I pressed a small, unmarked USB drive into his hand. “Copy everything you can find related to Chloe’s ‘expansion’ projects, especially anything with dates before the actual transactions.”
“What if I get caught?” he asked, his voice barely audible.
“Then you’re caught trying to expose a $14 million fraud,” I countered, looking him directly in the eye. “Not perpetuate it.”
He nodded, a grim determination replacing his fear. “Right.”
I watched him go, a slim figure disappearing into the vast, glass lobby. The next few hours were an agony of waiting in the car, listening to the rain tap against the roof. Around 2:00 AM, my phone buzzed. It was Julian.
“I’m out,” he said, his voice ragged but triumphant. “I got it, Arthur. Everything.”
He met me at a nearly deserted gas station convenience store a few blocks away. He looked disheveled, but there was a fierce light in his eyes.
“It was in a locked drawer, hidden under a stack of old tax forms,” Julian explained, handing me the USB. “Krenshaw’s meticulous, almost to a fault.”
He pointed to a specific file on the drive after I plugged it into my laptop in the car. “This one. It’s a series of itemized receipts. For ‘consulting fees’ and ‘expedited document services.'”
My eyes widened as I scrolled through the digital copies. The dates were precisely what I expected—before the fraudulent transfers in my physical ledger. And the amounts were staggering.
“Here,” Julian said, his finger hovering over one entry. “A wire transfer of 150,000 Apex Dollars. To Krenshaw’s private account. The memo says ‘Project Chimera – Document Retrofitting.'”
Retrofitting. That was the polite corporate term for backdating. The timestamp on the receipt showed it was initiated a full three months before the $14 million liability shifted into my department.
“He was paid to create a paper trail,” I breathed, the pieces clicking into place. “To backdate the audit records, making the fraud appear legitimate.”
Julian nodded, a silent testament to the concrete proof in our hands. The amount, the dates, the specific terminology—it was all there, undeniable and damning.
“Now what?” Julian asked, looking at the city skyline. “What do we do with this?”
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