"And Adrien?"
"Seven years."
Raymond stepped away from the desk. "That answer tells me why this is difficult."
Maya closed the file. "I don't want it to be Adrien."
"Wanting has nothing to do with it."
"I know."
She sent the three messages through separate internal channels and logged each delivery. Then she waited.
The waiting was harder than the work. WDI continued operating around her: employees moved between conference rooms, technical teams reviewed backup failures, outside counsel remained on scheduled calls, and a compliance group prepared documentation requested after Sloan's visit.
Adrien behaved exactly as he always had. He came into Maya's office twenty minutes after receiving his message. "I saw the transfer note," he said. "West Storage."
"Yes."
"Do you want me to have security confirm the receiving team?"
"No, legal is handling it."
Adrien nodded. "Probably better." He placed a printed report on her desk. "The credential review you requested. No new privileged activity since we froze administrator changes."
Maya opened it. "Anything unusual?"
"Nothing I can prove."
"That's becoming a popular answer."
Adrien gave her a tired smile. "Because you trained us not to guess."
Maya looked at him. He had used the same principle for years: if a technician did not know something, they said so; if a system failed, they documented the failure before repairing it; if evidence was incomplete, they did not fill in the missing parts with assumptions. That discipline had helped build WDI.
"Good," Maya said. "Keep it that way."
Adrien started toward the door, then stopped. "Have you eaten?"
"Not yet."
"There's soup in the conference room. Dana ordered enough for the overnight team."
"I'll get something later."
"You said that yesterday, Adrien."
He raised both hands. "Fine. I'm leaving."
After he was gone, Maya looked at Raymond. "You saw that?"
"I did."
"He remembers whether I eat."
"That doesn't make him innocent."
"I know."
Raymond sat in the chair across from her. "Betrayal hurts because the trust was real, even when the loyalty wasn't."
Maya did not answer.
An hour passed, then another. No unusual call came from Cole. Maya reviewed normal business reports while checking the secure phone on her desk more often than she wanted to admit.
At 6:30, Dana knocked and brought her a container of chicken soup and a turkey sandwich. "Adrien said you were going to skip dinner again."
Maya accepted the food. "Thank you."
Dana hesitated. "Are we all right?"
Maya knew she was not asking about the network. "We have problems we're still identifying."
"Should people be worried?"
"They should keep doing their jobs and preserve everything exactly as instructed."
Dana nodded. "That means yes."
"It means I'm not going to lie to you."
Dana gave a small nod and left.
Maya opened the soup, but did not eat immediately. Raymond pointed toward it. "You should."
"You and Adrien agree on something."
"That happens."
She finally took a few bites.
At 7:15, the secure phone vibrated. The message came through the number Cole had used earlier. Maya unlocked it.
Raymond watched her expression change. "What?"
She turned the screen toward him. Cole had written only a few lines: Keller had contacted one of the same intermediaries connected to the earlier payment network; he had asked whether surveillance had been arranged around the West Storage Facility.
Maya read the message again. Then she opened the three false notes on her computer: West Storage Facility. Adrien's version.
Raymond stood, but did not move closer. "You're sure no one else had that location?"
"I generated the message myself. It went directly to Adrien's secured account."
"Could his account be compromised?"
"Possible."
"Likely?"
"No." Maya opened the access audit for the message. Adrien had received it; he had opened it once; no forwarding event appeared in the visible system. That did not prove how the information left WDI, but it narrowed the path.
Raymond asked, "What do you do now?"
"Nothing."
He looked at her.
Maya closed the message. "If I confront him now, I get denial. Maybe he destroys something; maybe he warns whoever is outside. I need to know how far this goes."
Raymond nodded. "That's the right answer."
"It doesn't feel like one."
"It rarely does."
Maya looked through the glass wall toward the operations floor. Adrien was standing beside a workstation speaking with two engineers: he pointed at a report, listened to an answer, then corrected something on the screen. He looked exactly like the man who had helped run her company for seven years.
Maya kept watching until he returned to his desk: the coffee mug beside his keyboard was still there, his coat hung on the back of his chair, a paper container from dinner sat unopened near his monitor. For one moment, Maya wanted the test to be wrong.
Then she looked at the secure message again: West Storage Facility. Only Adrien had received that location.
She turned back to Raymond. "It's him."
Raymond did not tell her he was sorry. He did not tell her he had suspected it. He only said, "Then prove the rest."
Maya opened a new case file and began preserving Adrien Vale's administrator activity from the moment the first backup failed. She had identified the person leaking her movements; now she needed to learn how much of Williams Digital Integrity he had already changed under her name.
Maya arrived at WDI early Wednesday morning with a plan that involved no confrontation until the evidence had been secured. She had spent part of the night reviewing Adrien Vale's administrator activity with outside counsel and two senior engineers. The false location test had identified him as the most likely source of the leak, but Maya wanted every action documented before she removed his access.
At 8:30, she called Adrien into the small compliance conference room. Raymond was already there. So were Maya's attorney and Marcus Reed, the senior systems engineer who had received one of the false transfer locations.