Six months later, the real trouble started. An internal audit flagged a series of transfers. They were routed through an offshore account. The transfers traced back to a login. It used Naomi's old bookkeeping credentials. Credentials she hadn't touched in years. They had never been formally deactivated.
The company's own compliance officer had flagged the transfers almost by accident, during a routine quarterly review. He brought it straight to Everett rather than the board. He assumed it was simply an oversight to be quietly corrected. Neither of them imagined, at the time, who that login really belonged to. Someone who no longer even worked there. Everett remembered feeling almost relieved when he saw Naomi's old username attached to it. Relief, and then immediately, a colder feeling underneath it. He hadn't recognized that feeling as suspicion yet. He would, eventually, just twelve months too late to matter.
Everett confronted her with the audit report on a Tuesday night. "I didn't do this," Naomi said. "I haven't touched those accounts in years." "Then explain the login," he said. She couldn't. She didn't know Paige still had access to that exact system.
