Chapter 10 - Mateo’s Forged Name
Agent Brooks took the threatening messages seriously.
She took Leo’s phone.
Imaged it.
Preserved the metadata.
The number was a prepaid account.
Unsurprising.
But the photograph of Mateo had been taken from a parking structure across from Harbor Point.
Someone was following him.
That changed the risk assessment.
A protective surveillance team was assigned.
Mateo hated it.
“I fix docks,” he said. “I’m not a federal witness.”
Brooks replied, “Someone thinks you are.”
That afternoon, Olivia returned to the house she shared with Bradley.
She did not go alone.
Her divorce attorney accompanied her.
So did a private security officer.
Bradley sat in the living room drinking coffee.
“You brought witnesses.”
“I brought protection.”
“From your husband?”
“From you.”
He smiled.
“You always did enjoy drama.”
Olivia walked past him.
“I’m taking clothes and personal records.”
“You are taking nothing related to my companies.”
“My name is on your companies.”
“Because you insisted on pretending we were partners.”
She stopped.
“I pretended we were married.”
For once, Bradley had no immediate response.
Upstairs, Olivia opened the safe in her dressing room.
Empty.
A second safe in Bradley’s study had been removed from the wall.
Only bolt holes remained.
Her attorney photographed everything.
On the desk sat a single document.
The 2022 retroactive authorization Olivia had signed.
Bradley had left it there deliberately.
A warning.
Downstairs, she held it up.
“You kept the original?”
“I keep important documents.”
“You mean weapons.”
“Those are often the same thing.”
Olivia stared at the man she had lived beside for seven years.
“What happened to you?”
Bradley laughed.
“You think something happened?”
“Yes.”
“No, Olivia.”
He stepped closer.
“You finally stopped looking away.”
At Harbor Point, Emma and Mateo reviewed years of maintenance reports with Agent Brooks.
They found twelve documents bearing Mateo’s signature.
Eight were false.
All eight supported claims that Harbor Point required expensive remediation.
Three referenced Pier Nine.
One claimed Mateo had confirmed underground fuel migration beneath neighboring waterfront parcels.
“This could knock twenty million off valuation,” Emma said.
Mateo pointed at the date.
“I wasn’t even in the state.”
Brooks looked up.
“Can you prove it?”
“My mother had surgery in Phoenix.”
“Receipts?”
“Flights. Hospital visitor records.”
Another forged report claimed Mateo inspected electrical systems at 3:30 p.m. on a day he had clocked out at noon.
A third contained a technical error.
“They wrote megawatts instead of megohms,” Mateo said.
Emma blinked.
“What?”
“A real electrician would never make that mistake.”
Brooks smiled for the first time.
“That’s useful.”
The lies were getting connected.
Then Emma found something bigger.
Every false report had been uploaded from the same internal terminal.
Finance Office Three.
Greg Pritchard’s office.
Brooks immediately requested preservation of the workstation.
But when investigators entered Greg’s office, the computer was gone.
Emma stared at the empty desk.
“He can’t remove company equipment.”
The general manager appeared behind them.
“Greg requested a replacement this morning.”
“Where is the old machine?”
“IT disposal.”
Emma called IT.
The hard drive had already been physically shredded.
Brooks’s jaw tightened.
“Who authorized destruction during a known investigation?”
The IT manager showed them the signed order.
Greg Pritchard.
Timestamped ninety minutes after Charles contacted the FBI.
Obstruction.
Now they had something criminal and current.
Brooks’s phone rang.
She listened.
“Understood.”
She looked at Emma.
“Greg’s attorney just contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
Charles asked, “Why?”
“He wants to discuss cooperation.”
Everyone went silent.
Brooks continued.
“He says his client has evidence Bradley Sterling directed the falsification scheme.”
Mateo exhaled slowly.
Leo whispered, “So it’s over.”
“No,” Emma said.
Everyone looked at her.
She had spent too many years learning what powerful men did when cornered.
“This is when it gets worse.”
Her phone buzzed.
A marina system alert.
May you like
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS — ARCHIVE SERVER.
Someone was deleting camera footage from the night of the briefcase.
