At two in the afternoon, Shenine saw the message and called Derek. Her voice shook with anger. "The little girl went outside the department. Now they're freezing my approvals and questioning her."
Derek was sitting in a conference room with two independent auditors. He glanced at the papers in front of him and lowered his voice. "I'm being asked about the vendor addresses. You need to stop calling me."
"You're supposed to be on my side."
"I signed those releases because you told me the work existed."
"And because you knew Jamal would approve them. Don't pretend you're innocent now."
Derek ended the call. One auditor looked up from her notes. "Are you ready to answer the question about the beneficial ownership of SM Creative?"
He looked at the company registration on the table. The address was an apartment leased by Shenine. The payments had gone to accounts she controlled. His own approvals had authorized transfers totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the first time, Derek understood that the audit was not an inconvenience he could solve by changing a category.
He was part of the evidence.
Across headquarters, Maya was completing a reconciliation when a uniformed officer appeared beside the finance annex. A second officer stood just outside the door. Jamal had been summoned from his office. Shenine walked beside him, already speaking before anybody asked a question.
"Thank God you're here," she told the officer. "She's at her desk. Those are the fraudulent invoices. We discovered her approval on every single one."
Maya stood slowly. "I didn't approve them."
"Your name is on the documents," Jamal said, holding a folder Derek had forwarded before the auditors secured it. "This is the final straw."
The officer did not immediately reach for handcuffs. His name tag read Collins, and he appeared more concerned by the number of executives crowded into the office than by Maya, who had not moved from her chair.
"Who is reporting a crime?" he asked.
"I am," Jamal said. "We have approximately four hundred thousand dollars in fake invoices."
"Do you have evidence that this employee personally created them?"
Shenine stepped forward. "The signatures are right there."
"That wasn't the question," Collins answered. He turned to Maya. "Ma'am, I need to understand whether you're willing to provide identification and whether you have an attorney. Nobody is arresting you solely because somebody points at an invoice."
Maya felt the room sway with relief she did not yet trust. "I have an attorney. I've already reported unauthorized account access and suspected forgery to the company's independent investigator."
Jamal stared at her. "You reported us?"
"I reported that somebody used my name. You could have checked the logs yesterday."
Shenine made an indignant sound. "Officer, she's manipulating you. This is how she acts. She pretends she knows more than everybody else."