Naomi was already opening Trellis Defense Manufacturing’s incident report when I called Tyler a second time.
Voicemail.
I hung up before the greeting finished.
Walter stood beside me with his arms folded tightly across his chest. “Again.”
“I already did.”
“Again.”
“It won’t make his phone turn on.”
“It might annoy him into answering.”
Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed.
Instead, I called a third time.
Voicemail.
Across the conference table, Eleanor was speaking with Horizon’s attorney while Claire searched Tyler’s personnel file for an emergency contact. The room had stopped feeling like an executive office. Charging cables crossed the polished table. Coffee cups accumulated beside laptops. Richard’s recovered spreadsheet lay between us beneath handwritten notes, timestamps, and company names.
Naomi looked up.
“Trellis lost its coordinate inspection cell.”
“What happened?”
“Calibration values changed during an automated cycle.”
“Remote session?”
“They’re checking.”
“Any damaged equipment?”
“No reported damage.”
“Bad parts?”
“Possibly.”
That word carried its own kind of danger.
Trellis manufactured defense components. A machine that stopped loudly was inconvenient. A machine that continued producing subtly incorrect parts was worse.
“How long was the cell running after the change?”
“Approximately forty minutes.”
I swore quietly.
Naomi nodded.
“They’ve quarantined everything produced during that period.”
Good.
Someone at Trellis understood containment.
My phone remained silent.
Claire finally found Tyler’s emergency contact.
“His sister.”
“Call her,” Eleanor said.
The attorney intervened. “Have security do it. We need to keep the contact limited and documented.”
Claire nodded and left the room.
I returned to Tyler’s messages.
It’s on a server he doesn’t know I copied.
Addresses, dates, access credentials. Everything.
That didn’t sound like something Tyler had created that morning.
He had been collecting material.
Maybe before Richard’s scheme collapsed.
Maybe because he understood from the beginning that Richard could eventually sacrifice him.
Walter read the messages again.
“He knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That Richard would turn on him.”
“Probably.”
“So he made insurance.”
“Looks that way.”
Eleanor heard us.
“Can we access the server?”
“Not without knowing where it is.”
Naomi asked, “Did Tyler ever mention personal cloud storage?”
“No.”
“Home server?”
“Not to me.”
Walter frowned.
“He talked about one.”
I turned.
“When?”
“Months ago. Complaining about electricity. Said he had some little computer rack at his apartment.”
Naomi’s attention sharpened.
“What kind?”
“How would I know? To me a server is a waiter with health insurance.”
“Did he say what he used it for?”
“Backups. Movies. Computer nonsense.”
Naomi started typing.
The attorney raised a hand.
“We are not attempting unauthorized access to an employee’s personal system.”
“I’m not,” Naomi said. “I’m checking Horizon records for addresses or domain names he voluntarily used.”
That distinction mattered.
A few minutes later, security reported that Tyler’s sister had not heard from him since the previous night.
His apartment building manager confirmed his car was gone.
Then Trellis called.
Naomi put them on speaker.
Their cybersecurity manager sounded breathless.
“We found the session.”
“Account?” Naomi asked.
“Temporary vendor service.”
“Vendor?”
“Northstar.”
The same name again.
“Source address?”
The manager read it.
Naomi entered the number.
Different cellular gateway.
Not Benton’s.
“Can you identify the commands?”
“We’re pulling them now.”
I asked, “What parameter changed first?”
“Probe reference compensation.”
“And second?”
“Coordinate transformation.”
“Anything involving safety?”
A pause.
“No.”
That was deliberate.
Whoever was doing this wanted defective production, not obvious destruction.
At least so far.
“Preserve the entire controller image,” I said. “Don’t just restore parameters.”
“We need the cell.”
“You need evidence more.”
“We have a government review Friday.”
“I know.”
Silence.
“How?”
I looked at Richard’s spreadsheet.
“I can’t explain that yet.”
The cybersecurity manager sounded unsettled.
“You knew about Friday?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
I glanced at the visitor badge clipped to my shirt.
“Someone who was fired at a very inconvenient time.”
Walter closed his eyes.
“Terrible company slogan.”
Trellis agreed to preserve the system before recovery.
The federal investigators coordinating with Horizon requested copies of Richard’s recovered files, subject to counsel’s handling procedures.
Then one of them asked a question that changed our focus.
Were there credentials on Richard’s spreadsheet?
Not in the visible columns.
Naomi began examining hidden sheets.
Nothing.
Hidden rows.
Nothing.
Embedded objects.
Nothing.
Then she checked previous file versions.
One older copy was password protected.
Walter looked at me.
“Tyler’s server?”
“Maybe.”
The protected file had been accessed from Tyler’s Horizon laptop three weeks earlier.
Naomi could see the event.
She could not see what Tyler had done with the contents afterward.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered immediately.
“Ethan?”
Tyler.
“Where are you?”
“I’m safe.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I can’t tell you.”
Walter leaned closer.
I switched to speaker.
Eleanor said, “Tyler, this is Eleanor Grant.”
Silence.
Then Tyler said, “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll discuss that later. Are you in danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has Richard threatened you?”
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
“He knows I copied files.”
I looked at the phone.
“You told him?”
“No. He figured it out.”
“How?”
“I confronted him after security escorted him out.”
Mason had seen them.
Tyler continued.
“I told him I was giving investigators everything.”
“And?”
“He said I didn’t know what everything was.”
Walter muttered, “Cute.”
“What did you copy?” I asked.
“A database Adrian gave Richard.”
“From Northstar?”
“Partly.”
“What’s in it?”
“Factories. Network addresses. VPN credentials. controller types. Maintenance schedules. Customer events.”
Naomi stopped typing.
“How many factories?”
Tyler was silent.
“Tyler.”
“Eighty-three.”
Nobody moved.
Richard’s spreadsheet had twelve.
The real list had eighty-three.
Eleanor sat down.
“Are they all compromised?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many have active credentials?”
“I don’t know.”
Naomi leaned toward the phone.
“Where is the copy?”
“My server.”
“Can you give us access?”
Another silence.
“Yes.”
He dictated a domain, username, and a long temporary password.
Naomi wrote everything down but did not enter it.
“We need your explicit permission to access and copy the data.”
“You have it.”
The attorney said, “Tyler, state your full name and confirm that the server and data copy are under your lawful control.”
He did.
The attorney recorded the authorization.
Only then did Naomi connect.
A directory appeared.
Dozens of files.
Spreadsheets.
Configuration exports.
Remote-access profiles.
Photographs of control cabinets.
Corporate event calendars.
It looked less like a sales database than reconnaissance.
Walter stared.
“Eighty-three.”
Naomi opened the main table.
Rows filled the screen.
Factories across six states.
Beside each one were columns showing access method, system type, credential status, trigger opportunity, and sales value.
Some rows were marked OBSERVE.
Some ACCESS.
Some DEMO.
Some CONVERTED.
I felt sick.
“What does converted mean?” Eleanor asked.
Tyler answered.
“They signed service contracts.”
Walter looked at the screen.
“After failures?”
“Usually.”
Usually.
One word transformed suspicion into a business model.
I asked, “How many?”
“Seventeen.”
Naomi filtered the database.
Seventeen companies marked CONVERTED.
Another eleven marked DEMO COMPLETE.
Twenty-two showed ACTIVE ACCESS.
The rest were prospects.
Eleanor said, “Northstar knows about this database?”
“Adrian created most of it.”
“And Richard?”
“He added the business events.”
That matched what we had already discovered.
Adrian provided technical access.
Richard selected the moments when failure would produce maximum executive pressure.
“Who else?” I asked.
Tyler hesitated.
“What?”
“There are other people.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Names.”
“Some are initials.”
“Give us everything.”
“That’s why I copied it.”
Naomi began creating a forensic duplicate.
Then the transfer stopped.
Connection lost.
She tried again.
Nothing.
“Tyler?”
No answer.
The call had ended.
I dialed him.
Voicemail.
Walter swore.
Naomi checked the server.
Offline.
“Could he have shut it down?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone else?”
“If they know where it is.”
Eleanor looked at the incomplete copy.
“How much did we get?”
“Thirty-one percent.”
“Enough?”
Naomi opened the partial database.
The first thirty-one percent included twenty-six companies.
Not eighty-three.
Then I noticed one of the rows.
Company name:
Parker Precision Services.
I stared at it.
Walter saw it next.
“That’s impossible.”
My company was less than a month old.
Naomi opened the record.
Creation date: that morning.
Status: OBSERVE.
Owner: EP.
Trigger opportunity: HORIZON DEPENDENCY.
Then a note.
If Parker becomes Grant’s external technical authority, discredit before expansion.
Nobody spoke.
I had thought I was helping investigate Richard’s old scheme.
According to the database, I had just become part of its future.
