Chapter 7 - The Confrontation at the Bank
The arrest was only the opening salvo of a war that had to be fought on the ledgers.
By noon that same day, Arthur Vance and I were sitting in the private executive conference suite on the forty-second floor of the Meridian Trust Tower in the city center. Emma slept quietly in a portable bassinet beside the walnut conference table, tended to by Martha, my late father's long-retired executive assistant who had rushed from her home the moment she heard of our ordeal.
Across from us sat Harold Sterling, the regional vice president of private wealth management, and two senior corporate auditors.
On the center of the table lay the Belize bank documents I had extracted from Ryan's safe, along with the preliminary forensics report generated by Arthur's accounting team.
"It’s an aggressive structure," Sterling admitted, wiping his glasses with a silk handkerchief, his hands visibly unsteady. "If these bridge loan funds had cleared into the Delaware holding account, they would have been wired through three intermediate shell corporations within six minutes. By four o'clock this afternoon, the funds would have been sitting in the Bank of Nova Scotia in the Cayman Islands, completely beyond the jurisdiction of our domestic courts."
"Who was the inside contact, Harold?" Arthur demanded, his voice dropping into that lethal, quiet register. "Ryan Albright could not have generated internal transfer authorizations through the Vance Heritage accounts without an administrative override from someone who held high-level credentials in this institution."
Sterling looked like he wanted to crawl beneath the plush wool carpeting. He glanced toward the closed double doors of the boardroom.
"We suspended our senior accounts manager, Gregory Finch, three hours ago," Sterling whispered. "Internal security reviewed his correspondence. It appears... well, it appears Linda Albright-Geller was previously married to Finch's maternal uncle twenty-five years ago. The relationship was concealed during our annual conflict-of-interest audits."
"Concealed?" Arthur scoffed, leaning forward, his large hands planting flat on the mahogany. "It was gross negligence. Finch approved a two-point-four million dollar encumbrance against an irrevocable trust based on a forged signature that a blind clerk could have identified as fraudulent. If this bank does not immediately freeze every account associated with Finch, Albright, and the Delaware LLC, I will file a motion for judicial receivership against this entire branch before the close of business."
"It's already done, Arthur," Sterling said quickly, pushing a series of stamped legal instruments toward us. "Every account associated with Ryan Albright, Linda Albright, and their known aliases has been placed under administrative lock. Furthermore, we have interdicted a secondary transaction that was attempted only forty minutes ago."
I looked up, my attention instantly sharpening. "A transaction? Ryan and Linda are in county custody. How could they attempt a transaction?"
Sterling tapped a printed electronic log.
"An emergency wire transfer request was submitted via an encrypted web portal at 11:15 AM. The user utilized Ryan Albright’s secondary private access token. The destination account was a legal defense retainer held by a criminal defense firm in Manhattan."
"The third prepaid phone," I murmured, remembering the safe. "There was an accomplice."
Arthur turned to me. "What accomplice, Claire?"
"When I looked through Ryan's safe, there were three phones," I said, my mind racing through the inventory I had seen at dawn. "One was labeled with his mother's initials. One was his own. The third was labeled *S.J.*"
Arthur’s eyes went wide. "Sarah Jenkins. The woman from Oregon."
"She wasn't his victim," I said, the horrifying realization clicking into place like the tumbler of a vault. "She was part of the firm. The restraining order in Oregon... it was expunged, Arthur. It wasn't an expungement because he was innocent; it was an expungement because she withdrew the complaint after the family paid the settlement. They didn't run from her. She ran *with* them."
At that precise moment, the double doors of the conference suite swung open. Detective Bradley stood in the frame, holding a manila folder, his trench coat damp with rain.
"We have a problem at the county holding facility," Bradley said, his expression grim.
"Did they post bail?" Arthur asked, half-rising.
"No," Bradley said, looking directly at me. "Ryan didn't. But Linda Albright-Geller never made it to the central cell block. She claimed she was having an acute coronary episode during intake. The paramedics transferred her to St. Jude’s Memorial under guard forty minutes ago."
"And?" I demanded, my stomach plunging.
May you like
"And twenty minutes ago," Bradley said, "a woman posing as a radiology technician walked into her room with an alternate set of scrubs. The guard was found unconscious from a chemical sedative in the service hallway. Linda Albright is gone."
***
