Several board members were pretending not to listen.
They were listening.
So were the investors.
Tyler stepped closer.
“You are an employee of Irwin Development.
Those files belong to the company.”
“I never said they didn’t.”
“Then give IT what they need.”
“I’m in the hospital system because I was nearly killed three days ago.”
“You’re standing here now.”
That sentence landed harder than I expected.
I saw one of our project managers look at the floor.
Charlotte touched Tyler’s elbow.
“Enough,” she murmured.
He shook her off.
He had spent three days convincing himself that the problem was my password.
It had not occurred to him that the password was only the first visible crack.
The real problem was that almost every person in that ballroom was about to discover how much of his company had been balanced on work he never admitted I was doing.
A board member named Martin Sloane approached us.
Martin had chaired the audit committee for six years.
He was quiet, gray-haired, and usually impossible to surprise.
That night, he looked directly at me.
“Caroline, IT says the final Harbor District archive cannot be released without your project key.
Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Tyler interrupted.
“She set it up that way.”
Martin turned to him.
“Under whose authority?”
Tyler hesitated.
I answered.
“The client required restricted access after the preliminary design package was circulated outside the approved group last year.
I implemented the security protocol.
Tyler approved it.”
Martin looked back at my father.
Tyler’s expression changed.
He remembered.
There were emails.
There were approvals.
There were project logs.
There was nothing he could call sabotage without also admitting he had signed off on the system.
Martin asked, “Can the project be completed without Caroline tonight?”
Tyler answered before I could.
“Of course it can.”
Behind him, our Harbor District project manager closed his eyes.
Martin noticed.
“So complete it,” he said.
My father stared at him.
The project manager finally spoke.
“We can recover portions of the archive through IT.
But the final coordination set is Caroline’s.
She also has the latest responses to the structural and sustainability revisions.”
Tyler turned on him.
“Then recreate them.”
The man looked stunned.
“Tonight?”
