Chapter 4

Emmitt Mccormick POV:

Getting inside Crestone Holdings was like trying to crack a military bunker with a spoon. They were a corporate fortress, and the man who ran it, Marcus Thorne, was a notorious shark who didn't leave witnesses, let alone paper trails. The scandal ten years ago had been the single biggest win of his career, catapulting Crestone to the top of the industry. He wasn't about to let some washed-up PI and a disgraced architect undo his legacy.

Our initial probes were met with a wall of lawyers and stern "no comments." The money trail from Carmella's ghost account went cold in a labyrinth of shell corporations. We were stuck.

"He's buried it too deep," I told Charlotte one night, tossing a file onto my desk in frustration. We'd been at it for weeks, surviving on lukewarm coffee and the stale taste of disappointment.

She was hunched over a set of Crestone's public project filings from that era, her brow furrowed in concentration. She hadn't complained once, hadn't shown a flicker of the despair that I knew must be gnawing at her. Instead, she channeled it into a quiet, relentless focus that I found myself starting to admire. She wasn't just a client anymore; she was a partner.

"Maybe we're looking in the wrong place," she said, not looking up. "We're looking for a money man, an accountant. But this deal wasn't just about money. It was about knowledge. Someone had to understand our bid to know what to steal. Someone had to be able to translate my architectural plans into a winning counter-proposal for Crestone."

She slid a document across the desk. It was a list of Crestone's key personnel from ten years ago. Her finger was pointing to one name.

"Julian Croft," she read. "He was their Head of Project Development. A brilliant engineer, by all accounts. He was the one who would have gone head-to-head with my designs. He left Crestone about six months after they won the bid. The official story was that he retired early to 'pursue personal projects'."

"Six months after," I repeated, the tumblers in my mind starting to click. "Right after Carmella's secret payments stopped."

"A man at the peak of his career doesn't just walk away after his biggest victory," Charlotte said, her eyes meeting mine. They were bright with intelligence, the way they probably were before her family tried to dim them. "Unless he was forced out. Or paid to disappear."

Finding Julian Croft was harder than finding a conscience in a politician. He had dropped off the grid. No social media, no public records, nothing. It took me another week of calling in old favors and greasing palms to find him. He was living in a secluded cabin two hundred miles north, a bitter recluse who wanted nothing to do with the world he'd left behind.

I drove up alone. I told Charlotte to stay put. Men like Croft were skittish. A stranger was one thing; the woman at the center of the scandal he'd helped create was another.

The cabin was modest, surrounded by whispering pines. Croft answered the door with a shotgun in his hands and suspicion in his eyes. He was older, grayer, but the sharp intelligence was still there, curdled by years of resentment.

"Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying," he snarled.

"I'm not selling anything," I said, holding up my hands. "I just want to talk about Marcus Thorne and the Gallegos waterfront bid."

His face went pale. The shotgun barrel wavered for a second. That was all the confirmation I needed. I had the right man.

It took two hours and a full bottle of my best bourbon, but he finally talked. The story tumbled out of him, a confession poisoned with a decade of bitterness.

"Thorne came to me," Croft said, his voice a low rasp. "He said he had an inside source at Gallegos. A young, ambitious woman in their marketing department. She was willing to sell them the bid, piece by piece. My job was to analyze the data she sent and build our counter-offer around it."

"Carmella Nichols," I supplied.

He nodded, staring into his glass. "That was her name. She fed us everything. Material specs, engineering schematics, cost analysis. It was a masterpiece of a bid. Charlotte Gallegos was a damn genius. We didn't beat her; we traced her work and signed our name to it."

A pang of guilt, sharp and ugly, twisted in his face.

"So why did you leave?" I asked.

"Thorne cheated me," he spat. "The deal was I'd get a ten percent cut of the first year's profit. A king's ransom. But once the ink was dry, he said the deal had incurred 'unexpected expenses'. He paid the girl her piddling quarter-million and gave me a fraction of what I was owed. He said if I made a fuss, he'd leak my involvement and I'd go to prison right alongside her. He gave me enough to buy this place and told me to enjoy my 'retirement'."

He was a disgruntled former executive, just as Charlotte had predicted. The perfect witness.

"Will you testify?" I asked.

He laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "And go to jail? No thanks. My word against a billionaire's? I'll pass."

"You won't have to," I said, leaning forward. "Carmella Nichols didn't just take your money. She framed an innocent woman and ruined her life. That woman is my client. All I need from you is the proof you have. The original files Carmella sent you. The encrypted emails. You're a smart man, Julian. I know you didn't delete everything. You kept an insurance policy."

His eyes darted to a locked safe in the corner of the room. His silence was a confession.

"Give me the proof," I said, my voice low and steady. "Help me expose Thorne and Nichols, and I'll make sure your name is kept out of the official record. You'll be an anonymous source. You get your revenge on Thorne, and an innocent woman gets her life back."

He stared at me for a long time, the gears turning behind his tired eyes. He was weighing his freedom against his hatred for the man who had cheated him.

Finally, he stood up, walked to the safe, and began to turn the dial.

"Thorne is going to burn you for this," he said, not looking at me.

"Let him try," I replied, a slow grin spreading across my face. "I've always enjoyed a good fire."