Chapter 3 - The Door Kevin Should Not Have Known

By eight the next morning, Paige had slept for exactly ninety-three minutes.

She knew because she had watched every other minute arrive.

The white envelope sat inside a clear evidence sleeve on Gabriel’s conference table, the warm blue line visible through plastic. Nico had dusted it for prints and found nothing useful. The lobby cameras had captured the collector only from behind.

Paige had expected Gabriel to cancel the investigation, lock down the building, and start breaking doors.

Instead, he had done something more unsettling.

He had made coffee.

Real coffee.

Not the burnt sludge on Paige’s desk warmer.

He placed a cup beside her without comment.

She looked at it.

“Is this poisoned?”

“Only with judgment.”

“Good. I’m resistant.”

He sat across from her.

There had been no suit jacket that morning. His white shirt sleeves were rolled to the forearms, exposing a narrow line of ink near his wrist and another old scar. He looked less like the distant figure from the fifth-floor rumors and more like a man who had also not slept.

Nico entered with a tablet.

“Voss is in Chicago.”

“For what?” Gabriel asked.

“Port-security conference.”

Paige nearly choked on the coffee.

Nico’s expression remained perfectly flat. “Yes.”

“When did he leave?”

“Tuesday night.”

“Before the altered manifests were discovered,” Paige said.

“After Kevin entered the building,” Gabriel replied.

Nico placed the tablet down.

“Voss’s access logs show no entry to the fifth floor that morning.”

Paige rubbed her forehead.

“So either Sylvia is wrong, or somebody used Voss’s printer without him.”

“Or his access logs were changed,” Gabriel said.

Paige looked at him.

“You really do make optimism difficult.”

“It has never been a core service.”

The conference-room door opened.

Sylvia walked in carrying two paper boxes.

She looked as though she had dressed for court.

“I brought everything from the password-reset tickets, print-maintenance logs, and visitor requests for that week.”

Nico stared at the boxes.

“How did you get those?”

“I manage the fifth floor.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the answer you’re getting.”

For the first time, Paige saw why Sylvia had survived twelve years at Moretti Logistics.

She set the boxes down and pointed at Paige.

“And before anyone asks, I am helping because if somebody used my department to frame one of my employees, I intend to know who.”

Paige blinked.

“One of your employees?”

“Don’t become emotional. You’re still late too often.”

Something warm moved under Paige’s ribs.

She hid it by opening the first box.

They worked for two hours.

Most of the records were ordinary.

Then Sylvia found a visitor request for a copier technician on the Monday before Kevin’s appearance.

The company listed was Northstar Office Systems.

“No vendor by that name services this building,” Sylvia said.

Nico checked.

“She’s right.”

The request had been approved electronically.

By Adrian Voss’s assistant.

But the signature block carried no name.

Paige leaned closer.

“Can I see the scanned work order?”

Sylvia produced it.

The page looked clean.

Too clean.

Paige frowned at the small maintenance diagram near the bottom.

“What?” Gabriel asked.

“This logo.”

“There’s no readable company name.”

“I’m not reading it.”

She pointed to the symbol.

“It’s a geometric mark built from three overlapping rectangles. I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?”

Paige tried to remember.

Her mind supplied a kitchen table, Kevin’s laptop open beside cold takeout, his fingers closing the screen when she entered.

Not a logo.

A sticker.

“Kevin had that symbol on a USB drive.”

The room went silent.

Gabriel stood.

“When?”

“Months ago. Maybe four.”

“What did he say it was?”

“He said a client gave it to him.”

“What kind of client?”

“He was doing freelance sales work. I didn’t ask.”

Shame prickled under her skin.

There were so many things she had not asked because she had trusted him.

Or because she had been tired.

Or because the truth would have required her to change something she was not ready to change.

Gabriel seemed to read the direction of her thoughts.

“Not asking questions in a relationship is not the same as assisting a crime.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

She looked at him sharply.

He held her gaze.

Paige looked away first.

Nico took the work order.

“If Kevin posed as the technician, he could have accessed the printer.”

“Not the executive suite,” Sylvia said. “That requires a separate badge.”

“Unless someone let him in,” Paige replied.

A thought occurred to her.

“Where are the service entrances in relation to Voss’s office?”

Nico brought up a floor plan.

Paige studied it.

The camera still from Tuesday showed Kevin at the fifth-floor service entrance.

But Voss’s office and printer were on thirty-four.

“That doesn’t fit.”

Gabriel came around the table.

“Explain.”

“If Kevin needed the printer, why was he on five?”

Nico zoomed in.

The service corridor connected the freight elevator, records room, and a locked staircase.

Paige pointed.

“Where does that staircase go?”

“Every floor,” Nico said.

“Can badges track stair access?”

“Yes.”

“Then check Kevin’s route.”

“We don’t have Kevin’s badge.”

“You have the doors.”

Nico’s eyes narrowed with approval.

He began searching.

The electronic logs showed the fifth-floor stairwell opened at 4:09.

The thirty-fourth-floor stairwell opened at 4:16.

Then the thirty-fourth-floor executive copy room at 4:19.

A single temporary badge had triggered all three.

Badge T-118.

Sylvia went pale.

“That number was issued from my desk.”

Paige felt the old instinct to defend her.

Then Sylvia whispered, “But it was never signed out.”

Gabriel’s attention hardened.

“Who can generate an unsigned temporary badge?”

Sylvia thought.

“Me. Building security. Executive operations.”

“Voss,” Paige said.

“Voss’s office,” Sylvia corrected.

Nico kept scrolling.

At 4:26, T-118 opened a door Paige did not recognize.

Private records.

Gabriel went completely still.

“What is in there?” Paige asked.

He did not answer.

“Gabriel.”

It was the first time she had used his first name.

He noticed.

So did she.

His voice was quieter when he spoke.

“Historical contracts. Internal ledgers. Agreements that are not stored on the company network.”

“Illegal agreements?”

“Yes.”

Sylvia slowly sat down.

Paige stared at the floor plan.

“So Kevin came in through my floor, used a temporary badge from Sylvia’s system, went upstairs, accessed Voss’s printer, then opened your private records room.”

“That is what the logs suggest.”

“And four minutes later somebody used my login to alter a shipment.”

Gabriel nodded.

Paige’s pulse accelerated.

“They weren’t just stealing cargo.”

“No.”

“They were building a trail.”

“Yes.”

“To me.”

Gabriel’s eyes settled on her.

“That is increasingly my conclusion.”

Sylvia looked horrified.

“Why Paige?”

Paige answered before anyone else could.

“Because Kevin knew my schedule. My passwords. My signature. My work habits.”

“And because you were invisible,” Gabriel said.

The words stung.

He saw it.

“That was not an insult.”

“It was accurate.”

“You were useful to whoever planned this because people underestimated you.”

Paige thought of eight months of fixing other people’s mistakes without anyone asking who had fixed them.

She hated the truth of it.

Nico’s phone rang.

He stepped away.

Gabriel lowered his voice.

“If you want out, this is the moment.”

Paige looked at him.

“You said forty-eight hours.”

“That was before we knew someone entered my private records room.”

“So?”

“So I will not hold you to an agreement made without that information.”

There it was again.

The strange boundary in a man rumored to have none.

Paige swallowed.

“If I leave now, does the person who did this stop using my name?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not out.”

Gabriel’s jaw shifted.

“Paige.”

“You wanted the truth? Here’s mine. I spent six months paying for Kevin’s decisions because I didn’t know enough to fight them. I’m done doing that.”

Something in Gabriel’s face softened.

Nico returned before either could say more.

“Kevin used the badge again.”

Everyone turned.

“When?” Gabriel asked.

“Not here. Three nights ago.”

Nico placed his phone on the table.

The badge had opened a Moretti Logistics storage facility in Jersey City.

A facility Paige had never heard of.

Gabriel knew it.

His expression became dangerous.

“What’s stored there?” Paige asked.

Nico answered.

“Archived personnel files.”

Paige’s mouth went dry.

“Whose?”

Nico looked at her.

“Yours was removed.”

The conference room seemed to contract.

Paige’s first thought was the forged signature.

Her second was her mother’s address in Ohio.

Her third was Buster.

Gabriel reached for his phone.

Paige stood so fast her chair scraped the floor.

“No.”

He stopped.

She looked directly at him.

“You promised nobody contacts my mother.”

“I promised nobody working for me would.”

“That is not the same thing anymore.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “It isn’t.”

He made the call anyway.

Not to her mother.

To the security team.

“Quiet protection only,” he ordered. “No contact unless necessary. Her mother is not to know why.”

Paige wanted to object.

Then Nico turned the tablet toward her.

The storage-facility camera had captured Kevin clearly this time.

He was not alone.

A second man stood beside him.

Tall. Gray coat. Silver at his temples.

Paige had seen him in company newsletters.

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Adrian Voss.

And in his hand was Paige’s personnel file.