Chapter 1 - The Name on the Résumé
Ethan Whitmore raised the phone before I could answer him.
“Nobody deletes Clara Bennett’s application,” he said. His voice had changed. The panic was gone. What replaced it made two station employees stop talking nearby.
I looked down at Lily, who still had one fist twisted into my coat sleeve.
Ethan listened for three seconds, then cut in. “I don’t care what HR marked. Freeze the candidate record, the interview logs, and every access event tied to her file. Right now.”
He ended the call and stared at the résumé folder against my chest.
“Your father,” he said. “What was his name?”
My fingers tightened around the cardboard edge. “Daniel Bennett.”
The color left his face so quickly I noticed it even under the station’s white lights.
“You knew him?”
Ethan looked past me toward the glass doors. “Not well.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Lily tugged his sleeve before he could answer. “Daddy.”
He dropped instantly to her height. “What is it?”
She pressed her mouth near his ear, but her whisper still reached me.
“The man who was watching me had your work picture.”
Ethan went still. “What work picture?”
Lily tapped the plastic visitor badge clipped inside his suit pocket. The Whitmore Capital logo showed beneath his name.
“Like that,” she said. “But his was blue.”
Ethan stood and turned to me. “Did you see anyone near her when you found her?”
I pictured the crowd again. Winter coats. Coffee cups. A man arguing into a phone. A woman dragging a suitcase. Nothing that had looked important at the time.
“No. But she kept looking behind me.”
Ethan pulled out his phone again. “Station security. We need footage from every camera covering the north concourse from seven-thirty onward.”
He put the call on speaker.
A supervisor answered after two rings. Ethan gave his name and asked them to preserve everything.
The man on the other end stopped typing.
“Mr. Whitmore?”
“Yes.”
“Someone already requested the same footage.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
Keys clicked again.
“Your corporate security office.”
Ethan looked at Lily. “Which employee?”
The supervisor hesitated.
“I’m not seeing an employee name. I’m seeing a credential token.”
“Whose?”
Another pause.
“Yours.”
Ethan slowly lowered the phone.
My missed interview no longer felt like the worst thing that had happened that morning.
“I never contacted station security,” he said.
Then the supervisor shouted away from the receiver.
We heard a chair scrape.
When he came back, his breathing had changed.
May you like
“Mr. Whitmore, whoever logged in is deleting the footage now.”
