Chapter 14 - The Forgotten Employee
Rebecca spent the next several hours reviewing thousands of archived personnel files.
Around midnight she finally stopped.
"I found him."
Everyone gathered around her computer.
The photograph matched the dead man perfectly.
Name:
Thomas Keene.
Employment status:
Confidential Operations Division.
Hire date:
Thirty-four years earlier.
Termination:
Never recorded.
Daniel looked confused.
"My father had a confidential division?"
Margaret answered before anyone else.
"No."
Richard publicly never had one.
Michael looked toward her.
"You knew?"
Margaret nodded slowly.
"Only four people knew."
She counted quietly.
"Richard."
"Myself."
"Victor Hayes."
"And Thomas."
Rebecca opened Thomas Keene's employment file.
Almost every page had been classified.
Salary records were missing.
Assignment reports had been removed.
Only one handwritten note remained.
"Personal Security Liaison."
Michael slowly understood.
"Thomas wasn't an employee."
"He was Richard's shadow."
Margaret remembered him now.
Thomas had quietly followed Richard during international negotiations.
He always remained invisible.
Richard trusted him with everything.
Which meant one terrifying possibility.
Thomas had not been stealing from Richard.
He had been protecting something.
Rebecca looked back at the journal.
"If Thomas survived all these years..."
Michael finished the sentence.
"...then he probably knew where the Blue Ledger really was."
Silence filled the room.
The dead man had escaped the attic.
Reached the factory.
Removed the ledger.
Then someone eliminated him before he could reveal where he had hidden it.
Edward slowly closed the personnel file.
"We're chasing someone who has been planning this for decades."
Just then...
Victor Hayes called Michael.
His voice sounded unlike anything Margaret had ever heard.
"There has been another breach."
"What happened?"
Victor answered quietly.
May you like
"The trust headquarters..."
"...is on fire."
