Chapter 2 - The Wrong Shade of Blue

Paige stared at the security still until the pixels seemed to rearrange themselves.

Kevin’s jacket.

The left shoulder had a pale crescent where he had caught it on a nail while helping her mother move a bookshelf. Paige had stitched the tear herself with thread that was slightly too light.

She knew that mark.

“What entrance is that?” she asked.

“The fifth-floor service corridor,” Nico said.

“Employees need badges.”

“Yes.”

“Kevin never had one.”

“No.”

Paige looked from Nico to Gabriel. “Then whoever let him in works here.”

Gabriel gave a small nod.

The obvious answer should have been Sylvia. She managed temporary badges, workstation resets, visitor forms, and every small administrative permission nobody important wanted to think about.

Paige still rejected it instinctively.

“Sylvia complains when people take pens home,” she said. “She once made accounting reimburse the company for a missing stapler.”

Nico’s mouth twitched.

Gabriel was less amused.

“People are rarely only one thing.”

“Neither are you, apparently.”

His eyes met hers.

Paige looked back at the screen before she could decide what that exchange meant.

“Can I see the altered manifests?”

Nico opened a secure folder on the laptop.

There were twelve documents.

Paige pulled the chair closer.

For the next twenty minutes, fear lost ground to irritation.

The first page used the current Moretti Logistics template: black header, narrow blue rule, compact freight table, gray footer. She had helped clean the template after the company’s outside design vendor delivered something that looked as if it had been assembled during a power outage.

The second looked identical.

The third did too.

Paige zoomed in.

Gabriel stood behind her. Nico leaned against the desk.

“You’re breathing differently,” Gabriel said.

Paige ignored him.

She switched between two files.

Again.

Again.

“There.”

Nico stepped closer. “Where?”

“The blue.”

Both men looked at the screen.

“It’s blue,” Nico said.

“It’s the wrong blue.”

He gave Gabriel a long look.

Paige enlarged the header line until individual pixels appeared.

“The current template uses a colder blue. This one is warmer. Barely. Somebody copied an older version.”

Gabriel’s attention sharpened.

“How old?”

“Maybe six months.”

“Before you started?”

“About two months before.”

She opened the file properties.

The metadata had been scrubbed.

That was not surprising.

But the design mistake remained.

“Whoever made these didn’t start with the current file,” Paige said. “They started with an archived template, then rebuilt the information to resemble the new one.”

“Why?” Nico asked.

“To avoid leaving a clean editing trail, maybe. Or because they had access to an old package but not the current source file.”

Gabriel moved around the desk.

“Can you identify the version?”

“If the archive still exists.”

“It does.”

Ten minutes later, Nico returned with access to a design folder that Paige had never known existed.

She found the match in less than three minutes.

Template 4.7.

Retired nine months earlier.

The footer spacing, the blue rule, even a tiny misalignment in the third column were identical.

Paige sat back.

“Who had it?”

Nico checked the permissions.

His expression changed.

“Executive operations. Legal. Compliance. Print services.”

“That narrows it to half the people who make more than I do.”

“Not half,” Gabriel said. “Seventeen.”

Paige rubbed her eyes.

“Wonderful.”

Gabriel reached for the phone.

She caught his wrist before thinking.

The room went still.

So did she.

His skin was warm beneath her fingers.

A faint scar crossed the back of his hand.

Paige released him immediately.

“Don’t start questioning seventeen people.”

He looked at the place where she had touched him, then at her.

“Why?”

“Because whoever did this will know we found something.”

Nico straightened.

Gabriel’s expression became unreadable again.

Paige continued before her nerve deserted her.

“Give me the archived files and the altered copies. Let me find something that points to one person before you shake the building.”

“You think there’s more?”

“There’s always more when someone is pretending two designs are identical.”

Gabriel’s gaze stayed on her for another second.

Then he put the phone down.

“Find it.”

By six that evening, Paige had forgotten lunch, fear, and the fact that she was working in a penthouse office belonging to a man half the city whispered about.

She built a comparison grid.

Line weight.

Column spacing.

Footer position.

Embedded print profiles.

One altered document contained a faint crop artifact near the right edge, invisible at normal size.

Paige enlarged it.

A string of printer calibration marks emerged.

Nico frowned.

“What am I looking at?”

“A machine fingerprint.”

“Printers have fingerprints?”

“Commercial ones can leave recurring alignment patterns. This one is slightly off on magenta.”

Gabriel stood beside her.

“Can you tell which printer?”

“If your print department keeps maintenance records.”

Nico was already moving.

He came back twenty minutes later with a technician’s list.

There were six high-volume machines in the tower.

Only one had a recurring magenta alignment fault.

Executive Suite 34B.

Paige looked up.

“Who works there?”

Neither man answered immediately.

That told her enough.

“Who?”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened.

“Adrian Voss.”

Paige knew the name.

Everyone did.

Voss was the chief operating officer, Gabriel’s oldest senior executive, and the polished man who appeared in company photographs whenever Moretti Logistics donated computers to schools or sponsored hospital fundraisers.

He had approved Paige’s department budget twice without ever looking directly at her.

Nico swore under his breath.

Gabriel remained still.

“How long has he been with you?” Paige asked.

“Eleven years.”

“That doesn’t make him guilty.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “It makes this expensive.”

Paige studied him.

Most people would have heard betrayal in his voice.

She heard calculation.

That frightened her less than it should have.

A knock came at the door.

Nico opened it.

Sylvia stood outside holding Paige’s canvas tote.

She looked pale.

“I was told to bring this up.”

Her eyes moved across the room, found Paige at Gabriel’s desk, and widened.

“You’re not fired?”

“Apparently my week is committed to disappointing everyone.”

Sylvia did not laugh.

Instead, she looked at Gabriel.

“Mr. Moretti, there’s a man downstairs asking for Paige.”

Paige’s stomach dropped.

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t give his name.”

“Description,” Nico said.

“Forties. Brown coat. Scar near his chin. He said she owes him money.”

The collector.

Paige stood too quickly, knocking the chair backward.

Gabriel caught it before it hit the floor.

“He came here?”

Sylvia nodded.

“He told security he’d wait outside.”

Nico was already reaching inside his jacket for his phone.

Paige’s pulse hammered.

“No.”

Three faces turned toward her.

She swallowed.

“If he’s connected to Danner, and Danner is connected to whatever Kevin did, I want to know why he came here now.”

Gabriel’s voice hardened.

“You are not walking outside to interview a debt collector.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to suggest that somebody ask him a question before you scare him into another state.”

Nico stared at her.

“Do you have a hobby that doesn’t involve arguing with dangerous men?”

“Graphic design.”

“That explains nothing.”

Gabriel walked to the window.

For a moment Paige saw the distance between them clearly.

He lived in a world where threats could be moved by a phone call.

She lived in one where four hundred dollars could decide whether she slept.

Then he turned.

“You stay upstairs.”

Paige opened her mouth.

“That part is not negotiable.”

His tone stopped her.

Not because it was loud.

Because it was afraid.

The realization startled them both.

Gabriel looked away first.

“Nico will talk to him.”

Nico left.

Sylvia hovered by the door, still holding the tote.

Paige took it from her.

“Thank you.”

Sylvia lowered her voice.

“What is happening?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Sylvia glanced toward Gabriel.

Then she leaned close enough that only Paige could hear.

“Your password reset last Tuesday?”

Paige froze.

“Yes.”

Sylvia’s face tightened.

“I didn’t do it.”

Paige stared at her.

“You were at my desk.”

“I helped you submit the ticket. But IT called me away before the reset finished.”

“Who stayed?”

Sylvia hesitated.

“Mr. Voss.”

Across the office, Gabriel turned as if he had heard the change in Paige’s breathing.

Before she could speak, Nico returned.

Alone.

“He’s gone.”

“What?” Paige asked.

“Left before I reached the lobby.”

Gabriel’s expression darkened.

Nico held out a cheap white envelope.

“He left this with security.”

Paige did not touch it.

Gabriel opened it.

Inside was no threat.

No demand.

Just a photocopy of Paige’s forged loan agreement.

Across the bottom, someone had drawn one thick line in blue ink.

Not the cold blue of the current Moretti template.

The warmer blue of version 4.7.

Paige looked at Gabriel.

The collector had not come for money.

He had come to tell them he knew exactly what they were looking at.

Paige turned the copy over. Nothing.

The absence felt deliberate.

“He wanted us to connect the debt to the forged manifests,” she said.

Gabriel nodded once.

“Or he wanted us to think we had.”

That was worse.

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Because now the problem was no longer whether someone inside Moretti Logistics knew they were investigating.

Someone had just proved it.