Chapter 4 - THE SIGNATURE THAT CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD
By noon, Olivia had filed a police report concerning the break-in and stolen documents.
Rebecca insisted they separate facts from suspicions.
Daniel’s assault was one matter.
Mark’s entry into the house was another.
The forged signature was potentially another.
Nobody was going to prison because Olivia felt betrayed.
Evidence had to do the work.
That principle steadied her.
Until Carter Precision’s board chair called.
“Olivia, where are you?”
“Rebecca Sloan’s office.”
“You need to come here.”
Harold Benton sounded different than usual.
Harold had served on the board since Olivia was in college.
He had been one of Robert Carter’s closest friends.
“What happened?”
“We received documents this morning.”
“What documents?”
“Just come.”
Carter Precision occupied a manufacturing campus near Research Triangle Park.
The company made precision housings and sterile mechanical components used in medical imaging equipment and laboratory systems.
It was not glamorous.
It was profitable.
Olivia had spent thirteen years learning every unglamorous part of it.
When she entered the conference room, Harold was sitting beside outside counsel and Sarah Kim, Carter Precision’s chief financial officer.
Sarah looked exhausted.
A printed document sat on the table.
Olivia recognized the first page immediately.
It was a shareholder authorization.
It stated that Olivia supported preliminary negotiations to sell Carter Precision to Halcyon Industrial Group.
She did not.
“This is fake.”
Harold nodded.
“We hoped you’d say that.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Anonymous delivery.”
Olivia read the signature.
It looked better than the one on Daniel’s marital agreement.
Almost perfect.
Someone had copied her slant, the long tail beneath the C, even the way she crowded the last letters of Carter.
Sarah pushed a second sheet toward her.
“This is worse.”
The document authorized Daniel Mercer to act as Olivia’s personal representative in preliminary sale discussions.
Olivia laughed once.
Nobody else did.
“I never signed this.”
“We know that now,” Harold said.
“Now?”
Sarah looked down.
Olivia turned toward her.
“What does that mean?”
Sarah rubbed her thumb against the edge of her legal pad.
“Three days before your wedding, Daniel came to my office.”
Olivia stopped moving.
“He said you were embarrassed to ask me yourself because you didn’t want the board thinking you were distracted by marriage.”
“Ask you what?”
“How a transfer of voting shares to a spouse would affect the Halcyon negotiations.”
“There were no Halcyon negotiations.”
“There were exploratory contacts. Harold and I hadn’t brought them to you yet.”
Olivia looked at Harold.
He nodded reluctantly.
“Confidential approach. Nothing more.”
Daniel had known about a possible sale before she did.
“How?”
No one answered.
Olivia looked at Sarah.
“You told him.”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
Olivia pushed back from the table.
Sarah stood.
“Olivia, I didn’t give Daniel anything confidential.”
“He walked into your office asking about a transaction I hadn’t been told existed.”
“I know what it looks like.”
“What does it look like, Sarah?”
Their friendship went back twelve years.
Sarah had held Olivia’s hand in the hospital the night Robert died.
She had helped Olivia choose her wedding dress.
Now Sarah could not quite look at her.
Harold intervened.
“There’s more.”
He turned a laptop around.
IT had checked Olivia’s corporate account after the forged documents appeared.
During the honeymoon, someone accessed a restricted acquisition folder using Olivia’s credentials.
Three separate nights.
Each login came from her home internet connection.
Olivia thought of Mark entering through the patio door.
“Daniel had my laptop password.”
Sarah swallowed.
“Apparently.”
“No. He knew the PIN to my personal laptop. Not my corporate authentication.”
Sarah’s silence returned.
Olivia looked at her.
“What?”
Sarah slowly opened a folder.
Inside was a printed security authorization form.
The form added Daniel Mercer’s phone as a secondary device for Olivia’s multifactor authentication.
It had been submitted seven weeks earlier.
Olivia had never approved it.
Her signature was on that form too.
Harold said, “Sarah verified it.”
Olivia turned.
Sarah’s eyes filled, but she did not look away this time.
“You called me that morning,” she said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I was at my bridal fitting with my mother’s sister.”
“I know what your voice sounds like, Olivia.”
Olivia stared at her.
Sarah reached for her phone.
“I kept the voicemail.”
She pressed play.
Olivia’s own voice filled the conference room.
“Sarah, it’s me. Daniel’s helping me reorganize everything before the wedding. Add his phone to the account. I know it’s unusual, but I trust him.”
Olivia gripped the back of the chair.
It sounded exactly like her.
May you like
Sarah stopped the recording.
Then she whispered, “If that wasn’t you, someone had enough of your voice to build it.”
