THE INVISIBLE SCAR

Chapter 3: The Leak

CHAPTER 3

THE LEAK

It had his name on it.

Marcus Blackwell stood at the window of his office with a single sheet of paper in his hand and the quiet, cold feeling that settled into him when something had gone wrong in a way he hadn't seen coming. He read the report again while he set it face-down on his desk without looking at it.

A memo from an Internal Project-level financial projections for the Harrington acquisition figures that it had no business existing outside these walls, let alone landing in a competitor's inbox that the trail ,his head of security had done traced it back through access logs, IP addresses and the digital forensics that Sebastian Cross had run overnight, led to a single login.

Isla Reeves.

He said her name in his head the way he never let himself say it out loud carefully like it had

weight.

He had been very precise, for three years, about exactly how carefully he allowed himself to think about Isla Reeves.

He knew, for instance, that she was the only person in this building who had figured out about the fourteenth of March. She'd never mentioned it and never noted it on the calendar with any explanation. Just a blank hour, every year, without fail, and a cup of tea that appeared on his desk at ten minutes past two and was always exactly the temperature he needed it to be she didn't know that he knew. He never said anything because to say something would require acknowledging that she saw him in a way no onelse did, and Marcus Blackwell had spent the better part of his adult life building walls specifically to prevent that.

She was efficient, quiet and this was the part he was least prepared to examine, the single most perceptive person he had ever employed.

And her credentials were on a leaked document.

He turned back to the window. London was grey and low today, clouds pressing against the

glass, and he pressed one hand flat against the cold surface and thought, with careful, controlled precision, about what the most likely explanation was.

She hadn't done it, He knew that before the rational part of his brain had finished its analysis.He knew it the way he knew when a contract had a hidden clause not from evidence, not from logic, but from the particular quality of his gut instinct that had never, in fifteen years of building a company which was seriously wrong.

But the evidence pointed at her clearly and Deliberately.

The word deliberately arrived in his mind and sat there.

He turned around. "Send her in," he said.

His assistant the young man who covered the front of the house knocked and opened the door.

"Ms. Reeves, sir."

Isla walked in.

This was the part he would think about, later.

How she walked in.

She walked in the way she always did measured steps, chin up, folder in hand, her face set in the professional composure she wore like armour, her hair was in its usual bun, severe and perfect,she was wearing the grey blazer she always wore and He had occasionally thought in his weaker moments, wondered what she looked like without one.

He set that aside.

"Sit down," he said.

She sat.

He placed the report on the desk between them and watched her face she read the header. Her composure didn't break but something moved behind her eyes it was a micro-expression not guilt,not calculation but something that looked, very briefly, like confusion, and then something that looked, almost immediately after like the particular stillness of a person bracing for impact.

"The access logs trace to your credentials," he said.

"I know;" Her voice was level, "I can see that."

"Did you access this document on Tuesday evening after seven p.m.?"

"No." No hesitation,no performance Just the flat. Direct answer of someone who had nothing

to hide and knew it wouldn't matter.

He looked at her. She looked back at him, and this was the first time in three years that

he'd held her gaze for longer than the length of a professional exchange. Her eyes were hazel but he hadn't let himself notice that before.

They were very steady.

"The logs say otherwise," he said.

"Then the logs are wrong." Her voice was still level. "Or the logs have been changed and I wasn't here Tuesday evening, I was at my mother's in Highgate. She can confirm."

"That's something we'll verify."

Something in her face shifted, not anger, something more controlled and more devastating than anger. She looked at him the way a person looks at a door they've just accepted is locked."Right," she said softly, "Of course."

"I expected better from you, Isla."

He watched the words land,also watched her composure absorb them then for half a second something crossed her face that made his chest do something he absolutely refused to name. Then the composure came back, smooth and final, like water closing over a stone.

She stood up.

She set her folder on his desk.

"My access card is in there," she said. "Along with my key codes and the handover notes for

everything currently in progress." Her voice didn't waver. "I quit, Mr. Blackwell."

"Isla—"

"I'll clear my desk."

She walked out but She didn't slam the door. She closed it precisely, firmly, with the careful

control of a woman who knew that how you left a room said everything about you.

He stood there.

He had let her go.

He stood at his desk for three minutes, staring at the closed door. Then he picked up his phone and called Sebastian Cross.

"I need you to pull the raw server logs," he said. "Not the report, The raw data ana I want to know who accessed her credentials and when."

Sebastian didn't ask questions. That was what he was paid for.

Forty minutes later, Marcus had his answer. The access had been routed through a ghost

terminal a proxy set up six weeks ago, using credentials borrowed from Isla's login, by a device registered to the building's third-floor consulting suite.

Celeste's suite.

He put the phone down while he was looking at the closed door.

He had let Isla walk out. He had said those five words I expected better from you which he

had watched them land, and he had not stopped her, because Celeste had been in the meeting, with two of his board members, and he had made a calculation, aprofessional calculation which he was very good at.

He sat down at his desk and stared at the city and hated himself in a very contained and

controlled way.

By the time he sent Sebastian to her flat, she wasn't there she had a freelance contract

elsewhere by the end of the week. She had vanished, as efficiently as she did everything else, leaving no trace.

He should have stopped her.

He knew in real time he wouldn't have left her go anywhere.