Chapter 12 - The Airport Camera Shows Nora
The airport security footage arrived under subpoena two days later.
Jessica expected it to show Daniel and Anna at baggage claim.
It did.
She expected to see herself and Emilee arriving with the sign.
It did.
Then the investigator froze the video forty minutes earlier.
A woman in a gray coat entered the international terminal.
Nora.
Jessica leaned closer.
Nora had told the board she spent that entire morning at Carter & Bloom headquarters.
The footage showed otherwise.
She walked to a coffee shop near Gate C.
Five minutes later, Steven joined her.
They sat for twenty-seven minutes.
No Daniel.
No Anna.
Just Nora and Steven.
“What were they doing there?” Jessica asked.
The investigator advanced the video.
At 7:11 a.m., Nora handed Steven a small silver case.
Jessica recognized it from Anna’s photograph.
The same case Daniel had joked about carrying through customs.
Steven put it inside his briefcase.
At 7:19, they separated.
Nora left the terminal.
Steven entered a secure airline lounge.
Daniel’s flight arrived at 7:42.
Jessica understood the timing.
“Nora wasn’t going to Lisbon.”
The investigator nodded.
“The boarding pass may have been a decoy.”
Anna frowned.
“Then why put it in Daniel’s suitcase?”
Marcus answered.
“To make Daniel believe Nora was leaving with him.”
Jessica looked at the footage.
Nora had already handed the important object to Steven before Daniel arrived.
She was cutting Daniel out.
Daniel’s warning at the house returned.
You have no idea what she’s doing.
He had realized too late.
The investigation into the silver case moved quickly.
Steven was stopped before leaving the country later that evening.
Inside his possession was the case.
It contained the hardware wallet’s paired recovery device and a paper list of access phrases.
The wallet itself remained in the safe-deposit box.
Together, the two devices controlled an account holding nearly four million dollars.
The source of the money was not Carter & Bloom.
Not directly.
It came from a series of consulting companies tied to vendors that had overcharged Carter & Bloom for nearly three years.
Jessica stared at the report.
Three years.
The theft had begun long before the forged loan.
Nora had been approving inflated vendor contracts.
Daniel, as COO, approved the operational work.
Steven helped route proceeds through advisory entities.
Northstar was not the beginning.
It was the exit.
When Jessica started tightening procurement controls six months earlier, the group realized the older theft could be exposed.
So they planned something bigger.
Remove Jessica.
Force a distressed sale.
Use the transaction to bury old irregularities inside a corporate restructuring.
Then leave with enough money to disappear.
Anna looked sick.
“I thought I was having an affair with a married man who lied about being separated.”
Jessica gave her a tired look.
“You were.”
“I know.”
Anna shook her head.
“I just didn’t understand the rest.”
Neither had Jessica.
That afternoon, Daniel asked through his attorney to speak with investigators.
He wanted a cooperation agreement.
Nora had disappeared.
Steven was refusing to talk.
Daniel was suddenly ready to become helpful.
Jessica felt no satisfaction.
Only disgust.
Marcus told her Daniel’s attorney also wanted to discuss a civil settlement in the divorce.
“He’ll give up claims to marital assets.”
“He doesn’t have much claim to my company anyway.”
“He knows.”
“What does he want?”
“Reduced public exposure around the affair.”
Jessica almost laughed.
He had helped steal millions, forge her signature, weaponize her grief, endanger her company, and use their daughter’s trust.
Now he cared about embarrassment.
“No.”
Marcus nodded.
“I thought you’d say that.”
But Daniel offered something else.
The location of Nora’s backup records.
According to him, Nora maintained a private archive no one else knew about.
Jessica asked where.
Marcus looked at his notes.
“A storage unit in Alexandria.”
Priya searched the address.
The unit had been rented under an alias.
Paid in cash.
For five years.
Five years.
Jessica’s marriage had been twelve.
Her friendship with Nora had been seventeen.
If Daniel was telling the truth, Nora’s secret archive existed before Daniel ever became Carter & Bloom’s COO.
Before the vendor theft they knew about.
Maybe even before the conspiracy as Jessica understood it.
The question shifted again.
May you like
Had Daniel recruited Nora?
Or had Nora been waiting for someone like Daniel?
