Page 87 of The Cinderella Secret
“Except they shouldn’t have. Bo Zhao was born in China and he never completed naturalization. He was here on a marriage visa. Those points alone should have thrown up red flags, and his subsequent murder should have tripped some alarms too. Having a Chinese national employee working on a DOD project even ten years before the audit should have been enough for them to dig deeper.”
“So why wasn’t it?”
“Because someone falsified records showing that Bo was previously DOD vetted and no one noticed the anomaly.”
“And that couldn’t have been Randall or Owen?”
“No,” said Aiden, shaking his head. “Their plane went down the year after Bo was murdered. Whoever faked the documents did it, I think, right before the audit.”
“That means whoever was working with Bo and whoever faked the reports is still at DevEntier,” said Jackson.
“Most likely, yes.”
“But who is it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Ella has security, right?” asked Jackson, spinning his glass around in a circle.
“Yeah,” said Aiden. “She had to ditch them to come see me, but usually, yeah. Why?”
Jackson took a deep breath as if preparing to make a large statement. That didn’t bode well. “The bank robbery was a targeted hit,” said Jackson.
“What?” The words didn’t make sense to him.
“The bank was a set up. The thieves left a bomb wired to the building’s electrical system. The bomb squad pulled it out yesterday. They say it would have wiped out the bank’s servers and any records stored locally.”
“Oh fuck,” said Aiden. “That would have been any of the DevEntier information on Bo Zhao. They didn’t want to let Ella go. Or any of her team. Shit. Who knew?”
“Who knew what?”
Aiden focused on Jackson. “Who knew what records we’d turn up at the bank? It would have to be a limited number of people. There can’t be that many who have been at DevEntier this long.”
“I can think of one,” said Jackson. “Same guy who could hire new security for the records warehouse.”
“Charlie?”
“That was Evan’s gut reaction when I told him someone had falsified records. What do you think?”
Aiden took a sip of his drink and thought about it. “I’m not sure. It’s selling information on his own company. How does that make sense?”
“I ran some background on him,” said Jackson. “At the time of Bo’s death, Charles Senior was still in charge.”
“Evan did say that Owen and Randall talked about forcing Charles Senior out,” said Aiden. “And Randall’s email made it sound like it was Department of Defense info that was getting leaked.”
“Agreed,” said Jackson. “What if Charlie and Bo were collaborating? They would make a ton of cash—enough that Charlie could oust the old man.”
“Charles was going to leave the business to Charlie anyway,” said Aiden. “It was implied in the partnership agreement and I’m pretty sure it was in Charles Senior’s will.”
“Does Charlie seem like the kind of guy who would sit back and wait for his old man to die?”
“Not especially. And if he decided that he didn’t want to leave like Owen, then yeah, maybe selling information seemed like getting one over on Charles. But then what?”
“Then Randall and Owen die. You, Evan, and Dominique are all kids. Eleanor wants no part of the company. Charles Senior had a stroke two years later, and Charlie took over for him. That left him in charge with no one to oppose him. All he had to do was make sure no one caught on to what he and Bo had done. A convenient server crash for HR. Forged records before a DoD review. Easy.”
“The bank is a lot harder,” said Aiden.
“And once I find those guys, I’ll be a lot more certain of my theory.”
