PART 1: Ghost Numbers
The junior accountant's name was Andrew Keene, but everyone at Rourke-Thorne called him "Dusty."
No one knew why. Izzy didn't ask.
They met at a bakery on the east edge of Eldenport, a place no one with a Lexus or a real watch would dare enter. It smelled like burnt sugar and mop water. Dusty sat with his hands wrapped around a paper cup, like he was afraid it might run off.
He didn't look like someone who should be part of a corporate empire. He looked like someone who'd once had a panic attack during a job interview and never quite recovered.
"You didn't get this from me," he said as she slid into the booth.
"You already gave me something," Izzy replied. "I'm not here to blackmail you."
"I'm not worried about you," Dusty said. "I'm worried about them."
He slid a thumb drive across the table. Black plastic. Unlabeled.
"What's on it?" she asked, not touching it yet.
"Arthur's private audit files. Stuff he didn't keep on the shared drive. Hidden behind a dummy folder in his admin directory."
"How did you get into it?"
"Same passcode he used for quarterly reports. I worked under him. He was predictable."
"Lucky for us."
"Not really," Dusty muttered. "Not if it got him killed."
Izzy finally pocketed the drive.
"He was close to something," Dusty said. "He wasn't acting like himself. He was... paranoid, sure, but not wrong. He asked about asset recovery. Offshore reporting. Asked me how long it would take to trace a cash movement backwards through shell layers. That's when I started looking."
"And?"
He leaned in. "You ever seen a number get smaller every quarter, while the revenue report gets bigger?"
Izzy nodded. "Ghost accounts."
"Yeah. But smart ghosts. These weren't just off-books. They were... rehearsed. Polished. Made to look like benign write-offs."
"And where did they go?"
Dusty's face went pale.
"St. Lucia."
Izzy blinked.
"Offshore?"
He nodded. "One numbered account. Same beneficiary tag. Different sources — rental properties, development payouts, even Arthur's own bonuses. It was all being siphoned."
She narrowed her eyes. "Thorne?"
"No name. Just a code: MT. But come on."
Izzy looked at him carefully. "Why are you doing this?"
Dusty looked down into his coffee.
"Because he was trying to stop it. And someone didn't want him to."
She tapped the table once with her fingernail.
"Did Arthur leave any instructions? Anyone else he talked to?"
Dusty shook his head. "He wasn't trusting anyone. Not even me. That ledger... it wasn't a whistle. It was a kill switch."
Izzy nodded slowly, stood up.
"If anyone asks, we talked about payroll projections."
Dusty didn't smile.
As she left, he stared into his cup like it owed him an apology.
PART 2: Redacted and Reprimanded
The request was clean. Precise. Built from precedent and padded with enough language to lull any bureaucrat into signing without reading.
Izzy submitted it at 9:03 a.m. — a subpoena targeting Rourke-Thorne Holdings, specifically financial transactions linked to their shell subsidiaries and offshore transfers flagged under project expenses.
At 9:06, the request showed "RECEIVED."
By 9:42, it read: "REVIEWING."
And by 10:10, it was gone.
Deleted. No rejection. No record. Just erased.
Izzy stood at the printer, staring at the empty paper tray that should've spit out her confirmation copy. Nothing.
She logged back in.
ACCESS DENIED.
Her credentials for the interagency data system had been pulled.
She didn't need a memo to understand what that meant.
Sergeant Kerr's office was a curated illusion of openness — glass walls, wide desk, tasteful brass nameplate.
Izzy stepped in without knocking.
He looked up from his tablet. "Diaz."
"You want to tell me why my warrant was dropped mid-review?"
Kerr set the tablet down. "Not my department."
"Then maybe you can explain why my server credentials are suddenly revoked?"
He smiled, but it was thin.
"Maybe you're poking places that don't want to be poked."
"That sounds dangerously close to obstruction."
He stood slowly, buttoning his coat. "It's called prioritization. There's a killer already on our hook. No need to chase shadows."
Izzy stared at him. "You really think it's Jack."
"I think it's easy to confuse mess with motive."
"He's a wreck, not a murderer."
Kerr leaned forward slightly.
"Sometimes the difference is only timing."
She took a step toward the desk.
"I've seen the numbers. Arthur was following a money trail. It leads to his partner. My witness thinks Arthur was about to make it public."
"Your witness," Kerr said, "is a junior accountant with stress eczema and access above his pay grade."
"You talked to him?"
"I didn't have to." His smile was tighter now. "You want my advice?"
"No."
"I'll give it anyway. Let the dead stay quiet, Izzy. You don't have many years left on the job. Retire clean."
She said nothing.
He added, "You keep going, you won't just lose access. You'll lose your badge."
Izzy turned without a word and walked out.
In the hallway, she paused. The precinct was buzzing around her — phones ringing, boots echoing, conversations bleeding from desk to desk.
It felt like the same building she'd walked into for twenty years.
But suddenly, she was on the outside of it.
PART 3: Breaking Point
Jack didn't knock. He slammed the diner booth with both hands and slid in across from Izzy hard enough to rattle her coffee.
"I need to see Arthur's office," he said, voice tight, low.
Izzy didn't look up from the folder she was reading. "That's not going to happen."
"Why?"
"Because it's sealed. Because it's under departmental lock. And because you are—despite my best efforts—still a person of interest."
Jack leaned in, teeth clenched. "He had a photo of Leah."
Izzy looked up. "What?"
"In that ledger. You said he was watching her. He had a file, a pattern. If he's been near her, I need to know how far it went."
Izzy narrowed her eyes. "You're asking the wrong way."
Jack stood abruptly. "I'm not asking anymore."
That night, just after 1:00 a.m., Jack stood outside the Rourke-Thorne building in a city hoodie and stolen security badge.
Getting past the front door wasn't hard. He knew the guard rotation. Knew the cameras. He'd cased the place from his old life as an accountant — back when he still remembered access protocols and shared passwords and where Arthur kept his caffeine pills.
The elevator creaked open on the 28th floor.
The hallway was dark.
Arthur's office door had a keycard lock and a manual bolt. Jack picked the bolt in thirty seconds with a flattened paperclip and a shaved-down Allen key.
Inside, the office was the same as the night Arthur died — cold, minimalist, preserved.
Like the room hadn't exhaled since its owner was killed.
Jack moved to the desk. Pulled each drawer slowly, methodically. Nothing but legal pads, stationery, pens in tight rows.
He opened the cabinet behind the desk, feeling along the back panel.
A click.
The wall shifted — just a sliver. He reached behind it and found a false compartment. A leather-bound book sat inside, wrapped in a plain cloth napkin.
Jack unwrapped it slowly.
Not a company ledger. Not formal.
Handwritten. Sloppy.
Notes in Arthur's tight, severe handwriting. Arrows. Numbers. Names coded with initials. And a column labeled "SUNDOWN," underlined three times.
Near the back of the book, pressed flat between two pages, was a glossy photo.
Jack's stomach dropped.
It was Leah.
Wearing her school uniform. Backpack slung over one shoulder. Caught mid-step crossing the street.
Arthur was in the background — out of focus, but unmistakable.
Watching.
No eye contact. No interaction.
Just... surveillance.
Jack dropped into the desk chair slowly, the photo still in his hand.
He didn't know how long he sat there.
But when he stood, he was holding the ledger tight to his chest.
And he wasn't thinking about being caught anymore.
PART 4: Two Sets of Books
Jack was pacing in the alley behind an auto repair shop two blocks from the Rourke-Thorne building when Izzy pulled up, engine off, lights out.
He looked wired, not drunk. The kind of buzz that comes from knowing you've just kicked a hornet's nest and there's no putting the lid back on.
He got in without a word and handed her the book.
Izzy didn't drive. She just sat behind the wheel and flipped it open, her eyes scanning page after page of unfiltered chaos.
Handwritten ledgers were rare now. They told you more about the person than the numbers. Arthur's notes were precise but angry — pressure so deep in the pen strokes it had bled through the pages.
Each entry had a timestamp, a project code, a payout.
And each payout reappeared, days later, under a new name.
MT.
SL Holdings.
Blackstar P.
Shells. Ghosts. Masks.
And always the same pattern: money out, money back in, but with a new costume.
Jack was staring out the passenger window, jaw clenched.
"He was moving money for Thorne," Izzy muttered. "Or hiding it. Then logging a second copy here for insurance."
"Why do that?"
"In case someone made the first copy disappear."
She turned to the back of the ledger. Final pages. No numbers. Just names.
Some full. Some abbreviated.
One circled: Leah.
Next to it, an asterisk. Underlined.
Jack said, "There's more, isn't there?"
Izzy nodded. "Dusty said Arthur was tracing disappearing revenue. But this book shows who benefited. It's not just millions skimmed — it's theft, fraud, tax evasion. And if Thorne knew Arthur was keeping this..."
"He had him killed."
Izzy didn't reply.
She pulled out her phone and opened the junior accountant's files again. Side-by-side, she began matching line items.
It took five minutes to find the first direct match: a disbursement Arthur had flagged in his private log — listed in Dusty's document as a "consulting retainer" for a nonexistent firm in Ontario.
The second was easier. A payout for a "site permit survey" routed to Blackstar P., cross-flagged in both ledgers under MT.
The total transfers: over $4.8 million in three years.
All hidden. All filtered.
All traceable now.
Izzy closed the book slowly.
"This ledger... this is the real case."
Jack looked at her. "Then why do I still feel like the guy on trial?"
"Because you were the loudest mess in the room. That made you the perfect scapegoat."
"And now?"
Izzy slid the ledger into a padded envelope and tucked it beneath her seat.
"Now it's their turn to sweat."
PART 5: The Daughter's Name
Back in Izzy's apartment, the photo lay on the kitchen table under a harsh desk lamp, the only light in the room.
Izzy studied it while Jack stood behind her, arms crossed tightly, breath shallow.
The image was glossy, clear. Candid, but calculated.
Leah crossing the street in front of her school — hair tied back, shoulders hunched against the wind. No phone in hand. Just a canvas backpack and the hint of a frown on her face, like she already hated the day ahead.
In the background, out of focus but unmistakably present, Arthur Rourke.
Standing still. Hands in coat pockets. Head turned toward her.
Not waving.
Not smiling.
Just watching.
Izzy pointed at the corner timestamp. "This was two weeks before his death. You didn't know about it?"
Jack shook his head. "No. Last time I saw Leah in person was... January. Outside her mom's house. She didn't speak. Just got into the car and shut the door."
Izzy looked up at him. "Arthur was following her."
Jack swallowed hard. "Why?"
Izzy turned back to the ledger. Flipped to the page with Leah's name again.
One asterisk. Underlined twice. No note, no annotation. Just the name, and the emphasis.
She tapped it gently. "I don't think he just wanted to keep her away from you. I think he was building something. Positioning her."
Jack's voice dropped. "You think he was going to use her?"
"No," Izzy said. "I think someone else might have. Arthur could've been trying to stop it. Or hide it."
Jack moved to the other side of the table. "From who?"
She tapped the page again. "Whoever knew she existed. Whoever saw her as leverage."
He looked down at the photo.
"I should've done more."
Izzy's tone stayed even. "You're doing more now."
"But she's in this. Whether she wants to be or not."
Izzy nodded. "That means we bring her out of it. Clean. Quiet. But first, we need to know how she's connected. Because if that asterisk means what I think it does..."
Jack finished it for her.
"She's not just a daughter anymore."
Izzy flipped the ledger closed.
"She's a liability."