The Woman He Erased

The Login

Corinne's message burns on my phone, fresh with two views this week. Someone accessed it four hours ago before tonight's board meeting.

"Can you trace the location?" Damian asks, already walking towards the door.

"She's working on it," I say, falling out the door behind him. "If someone used it to access that account, from this building, we have a very short window before they realize what's happening."

Corinne is waiting in the small conference room, three monitors casting blue shadows across her face as she races across her keyboard.

"It's tracking to this building," she says without looking up. "Fourth floor. Marketing division."That's not exactly finance," Damian says, frowning. "Why would someone in marketing forge financial documents?"

"They wouldn't need to," Corinne says, eyes still on her screen. "All they'd need is enough technical know-how to fake the headers on an email and a stolen credential from someone with access to finances. She does that with the directory." Corinne pulls up a menu, cross-referencing badge swipes with the login time. "Someone signed in a guest account on the fourth floor. Someone who can issue credentials."

"Who has access to issue credentials on the fourth floor?" I ask.

"Marguerite's assistant," Corinne says, pulling up a directory. "Not Reeves's new one. Marguerite hasn't been here since her... accident." Her fingers hover over the keys. "She started eight months ago. The staff file says her name is Camille Ward."

I don't recognize the name, which means this is probably a safe choice. Marguerite has always been bad at choosing people close to her. She had Reeves, her closest confidante, who nearly got her killed in spite of his best efforts. Marguerite has since learned to value subtlety.

"Eight months ago," Damian says slowly. "That's about the time Marguerite started trying to change the marketing budget. I thought it was odd, because it wasn't like her to care about marketing at all."

"She needed a reason to put someone there," I say. The pieces are slotting together, each one a familiar shape of someone using the exact same strategy. "Someone close enough that they could see the server data, but far enough that it wouldn't seem suspicious."

Corinne opens up another image, this one a badge scan. Camille Ward is attractive in the sort of way that Marguerite probably finds comforting; unassuming, able to fade into the background without drawing notice. It's the same aesthetic that runs through all of Marguerite's trusted staff.

"She's still here," Corinne says, scanning badge records for the last few minutes. "Her badge was swiped in twenty minutes ago on the fourth floor."

"Of course, she is," Damian murmurs.

"We don't go charging in there guns blazing," I say, grabbing his sleeve as he reaches for the door. "The last thing we need is for Marguerite to convince the board that we've harassed an innocent employee until she confesses to forgery. We want this to go the way it did with Reeves. Quiet, with a competent legal team present to ensure nothing else goes wrong."

"You want to wait," Damian says, sounding frustrated.

"I want us to win," I correct him. "There's a difference, and I'm well aware of it." He exhales sharply, shaking his head.

"You're right. I just—"What?"

"I keep thinking about what almost happened five years ago, the way things nearly unraveled for us when we took that folder away from you. I want to make sure we don't fail like that again, if it's in our power to stop it."

It's the most vulnerability I've heard out of him since this nightmare began, and I don't know what to do with it except turn back to the board. "Corinne, see what you can dig up on Camille Ward later, see if she has any digital records tying her to Marguerite. We need enough information to present this to the board in the same way that we did with Reeves. Whatever it takes, I guess."

Corinne nods, already beginning the search. Later, Damian walks me to my car, and I know he doesn't want to go back inside yet either.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You've asked me a lot of things this week."

"A different kind of question." He looks at me for a long moment, eyes locked on my face. "If none of this had happened, if the divorce and my mother's accident and all of it, if none of it..." He swallows. "Do you think we'd still be together?"

I'm startled by the question, because I've spent the last five years refusing to acknowledge it even to myself.

"I don't know," I say at last. "I used to think that we would be. Now I can't imagine it."

"Fair enough," he says quietly. "Why do you ask?"

"Because for the first time in five years, I think there's a chance I could still be." He says it easily, without emotion, and I know he doesn't mean to hurt me, but the words cut all the same.

I open the car door and pull out the rest of the way before I answer. "See if you can find a reason, then. If that's not in your power to stop."

He gets into the passenger seat and watches me drive for a few miles. The radio is off, and I have the uneasy sense of being watched until I finally turn off the highway and see my apartment building in the rearview mirror. Whatever he's thinking about, it stays in the back of his head. There's no reason to disturb it until I'm inside.

My phone lights up as I park. A text from Corinne.

Found something on Camille Ward. You're not going to like it.

I sit there with my hands on the wheel for a moment, steadying myself before unlocking the message, knowing that whatever it is, it's going to ruin whatever fragile hope I had tonight.