Chapter 3: What Was in the Second Account
Someone handed Maya a towel.
She didn't look to see who.
Her eyes were still on the screen.
The second account had been open for nineteen months.
It was registered under a shell company called Northgate Advisory LLC.
On paper, Northgate provided consulting services to Whitmore Group.
In reality, it had received forty-one wire transfers totaling just under nine million dollars — each one processed two to three days before a major board decision.
Maya had found the first thread six weeks ago.
A single line item buried in a vendor reconciliation report that didn't match any approved contract.
She'd said nothing.
She'd kept her head down, made coffee when asked, smiled when Claire made a joke at her expense, and spent her lunch breaks in a bathroom stall photographing documents on her personal phone.
She forwarded the file now to three people: her father's attorney, the lead investigator at the SEC's Chicago field office, and a forensic accountant named Grace Holloway who had been quietly on retainer for eight weeks.
Her phone buzzed immediately.
Grace.
"I have it," Grace said.
"Give me forty minutes."
"You have twenty," Maya said.
"The CEO is about to make a statement."
She ended the call and looked up.
The rooftop had not recovered.
Waitstaff stood frozen near the bar.
Two junior executives were typing furiously into their phones.
The CEO — a tall man named Gerald Marsh who had built his reputation on never visibly sweating — was sweating.
Claire had moved to the far edge of the terrace with her father.
Their voices were low.
Her father's hand was on her shoulder, but it wasn't a comforting gesture.
It was the kind of grip that means: stop talking and listen to me.
Maya walked toward them.
"You don't need to do this," Claire said when Maya was close enough.
The sharpness was gone.
What replaced it was something Maya hadn't expected — not fear exactly, but a kind of desperate calculation.
"Whatever you think you found, there's an explanation."
"I'm sure there is," Maya said.
"My father can make a call.
We can sit down tomorrow, the four of us, and—"
"Claire." Maya's voice was quiet.
Final.
"I didn't come here tonight to negotiate."
Claire's father stepped in front of his daughter.
Richard Whitmore.
Sixty-four years old.
Three decades of Chicago business.
A man who had never once, in Maya's research, been on the losing side of a room.
"Young lady," he said.
"You are standing on my property.
You came here as a guest.
And whatever your father's position—"
"I came here as an investigator," Maya said.
"I've been one since the day your daughter handed me a coffee order and told me to smile more."
Richard Whitmore's jaw tightened.
"You have no idea what you're interfering with."
Maya's phone buzzed again.
May you like
She glanced at it.
Grace had found the third account.
