“Right.” He jerks his thumb in the direction of the open door behind him. “I’m gonna head on.”

“Sure. Have a good night,” I tell him.

I spend the next few hours mapping out what I know about each person on the board and their relation to each other and noting any affiliations I can find through online searches. Then I call Erik from Arrow Communications.

“Hey, Erik. This is Alex Rolfe.”

“Yep,” he says. Am I out of line calling him directly?

“When you were looking into the executives and board members, did you by chance look at their communication logs?”

“To see who talked to who the most? Nothing stood out. Communication patterns followed chain of command.”

“Would you mind emailing me what you found?”

“It’s posted in the network.”

“I’m not sure I have access.”

“I’ll send. Anything else?”

“Your forensic accountant. Did he understand the drive behind sales fluctuations?”

“We’d need to see the marketing plans to fully understand fluctuations. But share of international sales increases year over year. Those are to wholesale distributor accounts and probably have the biggest impact to the bottom line.”

“Huh. How can I tell what sales are international versus domestic?”

“The way they have it set up, you need to know the vendor. I’ll send you the file.”

“Thanks, Erik.”

A dial tone crosses the line. He hung up.

I stare at the board. I don’t see anything new. Temptation to call my dad and review the case with him brews, but there’s no point. Not right now. We will be getting new information. Any day now, Sophia will spend time with someone from the FBI. She may have seen or heard something. The FBI could have already met with her. They could already know so much more.

A text comes through.

Ryan: Dinner?

Me: Sure.

My phone rings. It’s Ryan.

I answer with a simple, “Hi.”

“We received confirmation the prison security tapes were tampered with.”

“What do you mean by tampered?”

“Like what they did with Sullivan’s home security. Deleted actual footage and replaced with earlier footage. Only, because it was a prison cell, it was more readily apparent what had occurred.”

“Wow.” It’s the only response that comes to mind. Sullivan’s security company had apparently been relatively amateur, but one would expect the government to be high tech.

“Exactly. Why don’t I come by and pick you up? You can leave your car—”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Are people still in your building?” It’s after seven, and the building has mostly cleared out, but the patter of feet in the hall and hushed voices assure me I’m not alone.

“There are people here. I’ll be fine. Where do you want to meet?”

“What are you in the mood for?”

“I really don’t care,” I say as I begin stacking the file folders and putting them away in my tote bag.

“We could also order take out.”

“Take away works.” He wants to eat dinner with me. That’s all I care about.