Chapter 3 - Follow the Data
The interrogation rooms were improvised from the estate’s bridal suites. David and I sat in a heavy leather sofa in the venue’s library, surrounded by walls of old books and three heavily armed federal agents. Agent Reynolds sat across from us, a laptop open on the coffee table.
“Mrs. Thorne,” Agent Reynolds said, using my new married name for the first time. “You’re a senior data architect for Vanguard Financial, correct?”
“Yes,” I replied, keeping my posture straight. “I design and secure the backend architecture for our institutional clients. Mostly high-net-worth portfolios and corporate accounts.”
“And Commander Thorne,” Reynolds turned to my husband. “Your current deployment details are classified, but we know you are acting as a liaison between Naval Special Warfare and the Department of Defense regarding new defense contracts.”
David nodded once. “Affirmative.”
Reynolds turned the laptop around so we could see the screen. It displayed a complex schematic of the device they had just secured in a Faraday bag.
“The tech your sister brought into this room is a custom build,” Reynolds explained. “It’s designed to perform a dual-pronged attack. It was searching for encrypted military communications—trying to ping the Commander’s devices. But its primary payload was actually looking for RSA security tokens. Financial keys. It wanted your Vanguard credentials, Maddie.”
The blood drained from my face.
For a second, the room spun. My family had always minimized my career. To them, I was just a "computer nerd" who typed numbers all day. They had no idea that the systems I protected managed hundreds of billions of dollars, including blind trusts for defense contractors.
“If that device had successfully scraped my authenticator tokens while I had my work phone in my purse,” I realized out loud, my voice tight, “someone could have bypassed the biometric locks on the Vanguard servers. They could have accessed the defense contract bidding histories.”
“Exactly,” Reynolds said grimly. “They would know exactly how much the U.S. government is preparing to spend on the next generation of drone tech, and they could short the market or outbid the current contractors. This is corporate espionage with severe national security implications.”
“Who gave it to her?” David asked, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. His arm was wrapped securely around my waist, grounding me.
“We are breaking her down now,” Reynolds said. “But your brother-in-law, Jamal, just handed us a very interesting piece of evidence.”
The door opened, and an FBI cyber agent stepped in, handing Reynolds a tablet. Reynolds scanned it and sighed.
“It seems Brittany has been living a double life,” Reynolds announced. “Jamal just gave us access to her secondary phone and their joint finances. She’s over a million dollars in debt.”
I gasped. “A million? How? Jamal is a highly successful surgeon.”
“She’s a gambling addict, Maddie,” Reynolds said bluntly. “High-stakes online casinos, illegal offshore betting rings, crypto margin trading. She managed to hide it from her husband by taking out secret lines of credit against his medical practice. She was weeks away from completely bankrupting him.”
The puzzle pieces snapped together in my mind with horrifying clarity. The designer clothes. The need to be the center of attention. The sudden, uncharacteristic gesture of giving me a "family heirloom."
“Someone found out about the debt,” I said softly.
“Yes,” Reynolds nodded. “A syndicate operating out of Eastern Europe purchased her debt from her bookies. They offered her a clean slate. Full forgiveness, a wiped record, and two hundred thousand dollars in cash. All she had to do was bring a wooden box to her sister’s wedding and make sure it sat next to the bride and groom for at least ten minutes.”
I felt physically sick. My own sister. The girl I grew up with. She was willing to destroy my career, jeopardize national security, and risk David’s life—all to cover up her own reckless greed.
“Where is she transmitting the data?” I asked, my data-architect instincts kicking in. “The device was active. It had a cellular uplink. It had to be handshaking with a receiving server.”
Reynolds looked at me with newfound respect. “We are trying to trace the IP, but it’s bouncing through a dozen proxy servers in dummy locations.”
I looked at David. He knew what I was going to ask. He gave me a slow, approving nod.
“Agent Reynolds,” I said, pulling my laptop out of my overnight bag that one of the groomsmen had retrieved. “I know the firewall architecture of Vanguard better than anyone on earth. If that device was trying to handshake with my tokens, it left a digital fingerprint. Let me trace the bounce.”
May you like
Reynolds hesitated, then slid the USB containing the encrypted intercept logs across the table. “You have ten minutes, Mrs. Thorne. Show me what you’ve got.”
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