The ledger was far more detailed than she had expected.
Every page tracked a different portion of the same network.
Shipping dates.
Transit houses.
Dock assignments.
Warehouse transfers.
None of it looked remarkable in isolation.
Together, however, the pattern became impossible to ignore.
Her eyes moved from one column to the next.
The quantities remained almost perfectly consistent.
Not identical.
That would have attracted attention.
Instead, they fluctuated just enough to appear natural.
A crate more one month.
A crate fewer the next.
Small differences that disguised an underlying regularity.
She looked up.
"You tracked all of this yourself?"
Ironvale nodded.
"My clerks gathered the records. I verified every shipment personally."
"For three years?"
"I've spent longer than that wondering whether I was wasting my time."
He tapped one of the pages.
"Eventually the evidence became too substantial to ignore."
She continued reading.
The route rarely changed.
