Victor and I turned to him at the same time. His brow furrowed.
“They’re actively online.”
“What’s going on?” Micah asked as he walked into my office unannounced. He’d already been up here a couple times today.
“Good,” I said. “You’re here. Log into Mira’s workstation and lock down the floor. No one in, no one out. Send the temp down to HR to find another assignment today. Just the four of us on this floor.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Victor grabbed my laptop and flipped it around, moving the security key and logging in.
“What the fuck?”
“Whoever’s doing this just lockedyouout completely,” Victor said. “I can’t get past that running code.” His jaw tightened. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do with a computer so this wasn’t sitting well with him.
I moved back around my desk, scanning the code.
The code was tight. Elegant. Precise. Too precise and running too fast to make anything of it.
“Whoever it is not only has my security key but my laptop as well.”
“Guys, you want to see this,” Micah said as he stepped in, eyes already tracking the hallway behind him. “And we’ve got a problem. Elisa’s not at her desk.”
I looked up. “We’ll worry about Elisa later. Show me what you’ve got.”
Micah tapped a few keys on his iPad and took over the wall screen.
The accounts Ethan had flagged were still bleeding.
“We already know this,” Ethan grumbled.
“Yeah, but this is the interesting part.” He flipped the screen to another list of accounts.
The room went quiet.
These accounts weren’t draining.
They were frozen.
Victor leaned closer. “Those are operational buffers.”
“And emergency reserves,” Ethan added. “They’re not supposed to be touched unless?—”
“—unless someone knows exactly which ones won’t trip an alarm,” I finished. Accounting doesn’t have access to these unless Ethan moves the funds into other accounts. It was done by design to protect us.
Micah zoomed in. “Notice the timing.”
The timestamps lined up in tight, deliberate intervals.
“They’re bleeding us here,” Ethan said, gesturing to the first list. “But they’re locking these down.”
“To slow us,” Victor said.
I shook my head. “No. To protect us.”
Everyone turned to me, questioning.
I pointed at the screen. “Whoever’s doing this is limiting the damage. Not maximizing it.” They were looping the money. For every dollar that vanished, two showed up somewhere else, buried deep enough to avoid alarms.
