She filled her coffee cup and went back into her office, acknowledging those who had made it into work already. She sat down behind her desk and opened the first report again. What was it that wasn’t adding up? Or rather, why was it adding up perfectly?
Her father’s name lit up her phone. She glanced at the clock. It would be about ten at night there. Typical. Her father never stopped working.
Riley straightened and hit accept. “Good morning, sir.”
“I just got off a call with one of the board members. They’re pleased with the ESG optics this month. How’s the PR work coming along?”
Riley kept her voice even. “I just got here, so anycongratulations should go to the staff that was here before me.”
“Whatever. You’re in charge now. Handle it however you want. Give me a rundown of what you actually know. I hope you do know something by now.”
She hated the way he dismissed any comment she made that didn’t fit his agenda and belittled anything she accomplished. She ground her teeth for a moment before speaking as concisely as she could. “We’ve had excellent compliance across all reporting categories. Our engagement programs are on schedule. The school literacy program is expanding next term, the medical supply shipments to the clinic have been consistent, and the reclamation project on the south site is exceeding its vegetation regrowth targets. Community relations remain steady. There have been no protests and no formal complaints.” Informal, yes. They handled those at the site level. Nothing that had been briefed to her needed to be up-channeled.
“So, you’re doing your job,” he said, brisk and distracted. “Keep it that way. The optics matter, Riley. Don’t let any of those feel-good programs slip. That’s your department’s job.”
“I’m on it,” she said and ended the call before hecould push further. She took her cup of coffee and turned in her chair to look out the window at the plant. Why did she let her father affect her? Her therapist said it was because she’d always looked for his approval and never really received it. Well … duh. She rolled her eyes. But why did she need it? That was the question the doctor had asked. She still didn’t have an answer. Because she’d never had it? Because he was everything in her world, her ideal, her hero.
She blinked and smiled slowly. No, he wasn’t. Talon was her ideal man. Talon, who was strong beyond measure yet kind and gentle. Talon, who did thankless work to protect innocents and worried that he’d let people down. He was a real man. Her father was … he was a user. He used his money, people, connections, influence … anything he could to improve his status, wealth, and power. Wow. She blinked and took a sip of her coffee. She’d have to tell Talon about her early morning revelation. It was a truth bomb that cleared away a lot of the confusion and worry about her plan to dig.
Taking another sip of her coffee, she turned to her computer. Discrepancies made sense. Perfection was … impossible. But there was a time and place for her digging. Right now, she needed to handle the daily load. She turned back to her work. With the PR updates done, she moved into her usual internal checks.
This was where she deviated from her standard. This site should have been her priority, but she couldn’t help revisiting the reports that had initially raised her concerns. Riley opened the export compliance reports for Bolivia and Indonesia first. Her last days before she’d left had been filled with frantic emails, flagged discrepancies, and half-written summaries pointing to inconsistencies in weights, declared values, and mineral classifications. She wanted to finish the work, gather all the necessary information, and get everything settled.
The files loaded in a clean sweep of perfect rows.
Everything reconciled.
Riley frowned, leaning closer. This was wrong. Shipping weights matched invoice values to the decimal. No fluctuating grades, no missing bills of lading. Sanitized. She clicked the file icon to view her notes and found they’d been deleted. She kept her notes in a password-protected file. Leaning back, she stared at the reports and felt fury at the audacity of her father. He was the only one she’d told about the discrepancies. He would be the only one who could have accessed her folders. He hadaccess to everything. What was he hiding? What was the goal in hiding what she’d found? She still had paper copies of the reports. She’d brought clean copies with her and left the ones her father had seen at his house.
Her training had taught her that clean data wasn’t a sign of efficiency. It was a sign someone wanted you to believe it. She right-clicked the Bolivia report and checked the version history. Modified: Two weeks ago. By: Admin.
Her pulse ticked faster. Admin accounts weren’t supposed to be used for report entry—certainly not for historical edits. That was IT’s catchall for bulk uploads. She clicked through Indonesia. Same modification date. Same Admin signature.
Someone had gone in during her transition to her assignment andwiped the slate clean.
She minimized the window just as a knock sounded at her door frame.
Webb leaned in, big shoulders filling the space, a cup of coffee in one hand. “Hey. You’ve been buried in that thing since you came in. What are you working on?”
Riley pasted on a smile, minimizing the ESG portal and pulling up a neutral dashboard. “Just updating the environmental discharge summaries.With all the rain runoff last quarter, I want to double-check our neutralization rates.”
Webb made a face. “You always start with the fun stuff.”
She grinned, leaning back in her chair. “I’d rather start with it than end with it. You know how it is. Bad data after five p.m. can haunt your dreams.”
That earned a chuckle. He took the bait and stepped back. “Fair enough. I’ll leave you to your exciting spreadsheets.”
The moment he was gone, Riley’s smile faded. If Bolivia and Indonesia were scrubbed, she needed to see what was happening closer to home.
She pulled up the uranium production summaries for the site. At first glance, everything looked fine—numbers matched the output expected for the season. But her memory from last year tickled her into action. The leach pads had been running hot back then. She remembered how sulfuric acid and ammonia deliveries had been frequent enough to clog the roads.
She opened the reagent consumption logs.
There it was. Acid consumption was up by twenty percent compared to declared production. The numbers didn’t match. They were processing more ore than they were declaring.
Her stomach tightened. Riley minimized the logs and opened the export permit registry. Most entries were for copper concentrates and mixed oxide shipments. But sprinkled in between, every three or four weeks, was an entry labeled:Special Mineral Compounds.
Vague. Convenient. And exactly the kind of labeling that could disguise a yellowcake shipment.
