Chapter 3 - THEY NEEDED MY COMPUTER
At 12:17 that night, I thought Mark broke my laptop because he was cruel.
By the following afternoon, I knew cruelty had only been part of it.
Corporate security asked me a question I couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Did anyone know you were working on a sensitive financial model?”
Eric did.
I had mentioned it over dinner.
Not the client’s name.
Not the numbers.
Only that I had an emergency deadline involving a major real-estate acquisition.
Eric had complained that I worked too much.
Diane had rolled her eyes.
Mark had asked whether the project was “one of those billion-dollar deals.”
At the time, I ignored him.
Now I wondered why he cared.
My company temporarily disabled my old credentials and issued replacements.
No confidential files had been removed.
But the attempted intrusion still had to be investigated.
That meant interviews.
Statements.
Possibly police involvement.
My marriage problem had just become a corporate security problem.
Then Naomi found another surprise.
Three years earlier, I had signed a limited personal guarantee for one equipment lease belonging to Bennett Contracting.
Eric had needed two trucks.
I agreed because he swore it was temporary.
The lease had been paid.
I assumed that ended my involvement.
It hadn’t.
Someone had reused a scanned copy of my signature on two later guarantees.
One covered equipment.
The other supported a $280,000 revolving credit facility.
“I never signed those.”
“I believe you,” Naomi said.
“The bank may need more than belief.”
“So what happens?”
“We report suspected forgery.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“If the lender freezes the line, Eric’s company could stop operating.”
Naomi looked directly at me through the screen.
“Claire, you are not shutting down his business. Whoever forged your signature created that risk.”
It was difficult to hear.
Because for seven years, every problem had somehow become mine to fix.
Eric’s slow season.
Diane’s tax bill.
Mark’s credit cards.
The leaking roof.
The broken truck.
Even dog poop at midnight.
At 5:11 p.m., Eric finally left a message that sounded frightened.
“Claire, something happened with our supplier account. Call me before you do anything else.”
Our.
He still called it ours.
I called Naomi instead.
She had just received the ownership documents for C&E’s bank account.
“Claire, there’s another problem.”
“What?”
“C&E received a contract four months ago worth $3.6 million.”
I stared at the wall.
“For what?”
“A redevelopment portfolio.”
Then she said the name of the client.
My blood went cold.
It was a company my employer had been advising.
A company whose confidential projections had been sitting on my laptop the night Mark destroyed it.
May you like
Eric’s fake woman-owned business had somehow bid on a project connected to my confidential work.
And suddenly I knew exactly why they needed my computer.
