Chapter 7
I didn't expect him to call Olivia right there in front of me.
We were back in the little break room. He'd spread the plastic sleeve flat on the cheap laminate table and the volunteer sheet looked even more fake under the fluorescent light. The fluorescent hummed. My coffee had gone cold. I'd been holding the same paper cup for twenty minutes and hadn't taken a sip.
He pulled out his phone and said, "I'm going to put this on speaker so you hear exactly what she says. Don't interrupt. Just listen."
I nodded. My throat was dry.
He found the contact and hit call. It rang three times. A woman's voice picked up, bright, a little breathless, with traffic behind her.
"Yeah, it's me. Hold on, I'm coming out of the deli," she said. "What's up?"
"Olivia. It's Marcus," he said. His voice was even, not angry. "Sorry to catch you in New York. Quick check. Have you logged into payroll or approved anything remotely in the last week? Any overtime, any coverage codes?"
There was a beat. I heard a door chime and then the street got quieter, like she'd stepped outside.
"No," she said. "I haven't touched the portal since last Tuesday before I flew out. Why? You know I wouldn't approve from my phone anyway. IT keeps telling me not to."
"Your code 4472 was used three nights in a row," he said. "Fifteen-oh-seven each night. Green button on the floor terminal."
I watched his face as he said it. He wasn't looking at me. He was watching the volunteer sheet, like he wanted the paper to hear it too.
Olivia laughed once, short. "No way. That's not me. I've been at the midtown site all week. Check the login. I was literally on a ladder this morning hanging signage. Ask payroll, my VPN hasn't even pinged."
"We will," he said. "You sure no one has your code? You didn't leave it written down in the office?"
"I keep it in the locked drawer, you know that," she said, and now she sounded annoyed. "Marcus, who's using it? Is everything okay there?"
"Someone used it to cover shifts that didn't exist and put them under Maya Collins," he said. He glanced at me then. "She's here. She's okay, just exhausted. Three nights, almost thirty-six hours."
There was a pause on the other end. Then Olivia's voice dropped.
"Put Maya on?"
He held the phone toward me. I leaned in.
"Hi," I said. My voice cracked. "It's Maya."
"Maya, hon, I didn't approve anything," she said quickly. "I swear. I didn't even know you were on this week. If I'd known they'd run you like that I'd have called. Are you okay?"
"I am now," I said. It was the first honest thing I'd said out loud in three days and my eyes stung.
"Okay. Marcus, you need the IP log," Olivia said, back to him. "If it's my code, it'll show where it came from. Mine would show as New York mobile if it was me, which it's not. So it'll show your terminal."
"Already requested," he said. "I'll have IT pull the last seventy-two hours. If it's local, it's the floor terminal. That narrows it to who was in the office after hours."
"Want me to send you a photo of me at the site with today's date?" she offered. "I have the check-in sheet."
"Please," he said. "Send it to me and to HR. That's enough for now. Enjoy your lunch. I'll handle it here."
He hung up. The break room felt too quiet after the street noise was gone.
He set the phone down next to the plastic sleeve and exhaled slowly.
"So that's clean," he said quietly. "She didn't log in remotely. No remote approval. That means whoever did it was here, in this building, standing at that silver terminal and pressing green at 15:07."
I stared at the yellow highlights on the schedule sheet under the plastic. 15:00. 15:07. The same two times, three nights.
"Why that exact time?" I whispered.
"Because that's when the system auto-locks daily approvals," he said. "If you hit approve at 15:07, it rolls into the next pay cycle and doesn't flag overtime until payroll runs. Smart. Someone knew the window."
He pulled a small notepad from his blazer pocket and wrote: IP LOG - 72HR - TERMINAL ID - 15:07 GREEN.
"You don't need to understand the tech," he said, seeing me stare. "Just know we can prove where the button was pressed. That's next."
He stood, slid the sleeve toward him, and tucked his phone away.
May you like
"I'm filing the IT request now," he said. "Stay here. HR wants your handwriting sample still, but we'll do it after the log comes back so you can go home after. You shouldn't be here much longer."
He left me with the cold coffee and the hum of the fridge, and for the first time since I woke up on that marble table, I believed someone else was actually carrying the weight of proving it.
