Chapter 8 - The Decryption
We holed up in a dilapidated motor lodge off Route 9, a place with peeling pale-blue paint and a buzzing neon sign that flickered out every few seconds. The room smelled of old cedar and damp carpet, but it had a heavy deadbolt and a window overlooking the tree line where we could spot any approaching vehicle. Cormac pulled the heavy curtains shut, leaving only a sliver of gray morning light cutting across the scarred wooden table where we laid out Arthur's files.
I sat on the edge of the sagging mattress, using a dry corner of a towel to wipe the mud from my face, while Cormac pried open the metal casing of the solid-state drive with a pocketknife. He connected a portable interface cable to his encrypted laptop, the small LED indicator blinking a steady, rhythmic amber before turning a solid, reassuring green. Files began populating the screen in cascading columns of cryptographic hashes.
"Look at this," Cormac said, turning the laptop toward me so the light illuminated the dark ink tattoos across his forearms. He pointed to a series of subfolders labeled *Marsh Foundation Off-Shoreing*. "This isn't just embezzlement, Sloane. This is the primary funding conduit for the PACs pushing the new municipal zoning bills through the state legislature. Gideon isn't just protecting a corporate brand; he's buying the municipal courts."
I leaned closer, my shoulder brushing against his chest, reading the names of shell companies and transferred wire receipts that spanned over six years. My name was buried at the bottom of the earliest subfolders as the designated corporate signatory—a fraudulent proxy account Gideon had set up the day I started working for him, designed to take the fall the moment federal regulators started looking too closely at his ledger books.
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"He planned this from the very beginning," I whispered, the realization sending a cold shure down my spine. "When I started uncovering discrepancies in the philanthropic grants three years ago, he didn't just threaten me to keep me quiet. He was building my paper trail as his escape hatch."
Cormac looked up from the screen, his dark eyes softening as he reached out and gently tucked a strand of wet red hair behind my ear. His thumb lingered for a second against my cheekbone, his skin warm against the chill in the room. "The escape hatch just collapsed on him," Cormac said softly. "We have the cryptographic keys, the wire receipts, and Arthur's signed deposition logs. All we need now is a platform big enough that he can't bury it with a press release."
