He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 241

Chapter 241

Alex’s POV

I was at my desk by six-thirty….

The office was empty at this hour.

I had access codes for the financial archive that Maya’s team had been maintaining across the months of my absence… the standing arrangement between Voss Maritime and Hargrove Meridian that had been formalised before the wedding and that had continued operating through everything that followed.

I opened the archive.

Started reading

The reports covered six months.

Not the operational reports… the transaction records.

Most of the transactions were ordinary.

The ordinary business of a maritime company running its operations and fulfilling its obligations and managing its accounts was significant in volume and in regularity…. the kind of financial activity that produced a pattern, that communicated its own nature through its consistency.

The ones that didn’t fit the pattern were not obvious at first.

Three payments.

Not small,

Eight figures.

Each one authorised with documentation that was, from a procedural standpoint, exactly what it should be…. the correct signatures, the correct approval chains, the correct paperwork structure of a transaction that had gone through the appropriate process.

From a procedural standpoint

The signatures looked like mine.

They had gone through the approval structure.

The paperwork was flawless….

I looked at them for a long time.

I had not authorised these payments.

I had not been in a position to authorise anything across the months they had been processed.

Which meant someone had.

Using documentation that was sufficiently similar to the legitimate versions that it had moved through the system without triggering the flags that should have triggered.

1/4

+158s

The architecture was careful.

The architecture was the work of someone who understood the system well enough to move through it correctly.

I pulled the account numbers

The receiving end of the three payments.

Ran them through the cross-reference tool that the finance team had built for exactly this kind of analysis.

The first account.

A holding structure.

The second account

Similar structure. Different jurisdiction.

The third account.

I stared at the screen.

The account number.

The reference format.

I opened Maya’s father’s notebook…. I had brought it with me, the instinct of someone who had understood last night that the notebook was now an active instrument rather than an archived one.

The third account number appeared in Edwin Hargrove’s handwriting.

Not similar.

Not close.

Identical

I leaned back.

The office was still empty.

The same account.

In a notebook from nine years ago.

In a payment authorised from Voss Maritime

The account had been receiving money since before Edwin Hargrove died.

It had continued receiving money through whatever had happened to him.

It had received eight figures from my company in the months when I wasn’t there to prevent it.

The implications arrived in sequence

Someone had known about the account before Edwin Hargrove died.

Someone had ensured the account survived him.

Someone had maintained its operational status across nine years.

2/4

+15 Bes

Someone had positioned themselves, during my absence, to move money from Voss Maritime into the account structure that Edwin Hargrove had been tracking when he was killed.

That someone had access to my company’s financial systems at the approval level.

That someone had either been inside my governance structure or had compromised someone who was.

The connection between Edwin Hargrove’s murder nine years ago and the transactions on my screen three months ago was not circumstantial.

It was financial.

It was documented.

I locked the files.

The safe.

I reached for my phone.

Called Maya.

She answered on the second ring

“Alex?”

“I’m at the office,” I said. “I’ve been in the financial archive since six-thirty,”

“What did you find?”

I looked at the safe.

At the locked office around me.

At the screen, now closed, that had been displaying the three payments and the account number that appeared in both places.

“I think I’ve found the connection,” I said

A pause.

“What connection?”

I took a breath.

“Your father’s murder,” I said. “And my company.”

The silence that followed.

“The account numbers,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “The same structure. Eight figures moved through Voss Maritime during my absence, authorised on documentation I didn’t sign, into accounts that match what your father was tracking.” I paused. “Someone used my company as part of whatever this is. While I wasn’t here to see it.”

“Alex…”

A knock at the door.

3/4

I looked up.

She came through the door with the polite…. The new hire.

“Mr. Voss,” she said. “Your next meeting is ready.”

I looked at her

At the professional presentation.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be there in five minutes”

She smiled.

Turned.

Walked toward the door.

Her eyes, in passing, moved across the desk.

Briefly

The natural movement of eyes in a room.

The kind of movement you would not notice if you were not specifically watching for it

She left.

The door closed.

“Alex?” Maya’s voice, still on the phone.

“I’m here,” I said. “I need to get to this meeting. I’ll have the files with me when I’m home tonight.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“Always,” I said.

I ended the call.

Looked at the safe.

At the door.

At the room that was, as far as I could tell, exactly what it was.

I went to my meeting.

The safe stayed locked.

P

U

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