Chapter 10: The Sabotage in Perth
My company’s board called an emergency meeting less than two hours after I left the detention center.
I joined from a secure conference room at the federal prosecutor’s office. Rebecca sat several feet away, reviewing documents while I connected my laptop to the encrypted video system.
One by one, the faces of the board members appeared on the screen.
Richard Cole, our chief operating officer, looked as though he had not slept.
Beside him sat Linda Park, the head of corporate security, and three directors from our Boston headquarters.
On another screen, executives from Western Australia gathered inside the temporary control center near Perth.
The room was silent.
Richard spoke first.
“Marcus, we have another failure.”
“What happened?”
“At four seventeen this morning, the facility’s automated safety system accepted an unauthorized software update.”
My stomach tightened.
“Was production active?”
“No. The night team detected the change during a diagnostic test. They shut everything down before the update reached the pressure-control network.”
“How much damage?”
Linda answered.
“The physical equipment is intact, but the safety certification is now invalid. We will need to inspect the entire system before regulators allow us to resume.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks,” Richard said. “Possibly longer.”
I leaned back in my chair.
The Perth project had already fallen months behind schedule.
Another six-week delay could cost millions of dollars and threaten contracts we had spent years negotiating.
Richard continued carefully.
“There is something else.”
He shared a technical report on the screen.
The update had been approved using my digital credentials.
My name appeared beside the authorization.
So did my biometric identification number.
Anyone reviewing the record would believe I had personally approved the change.
“I didn’t authorize that,” I said.
“We know,” Linda replied. “You were at the hospital when the approval occurred.”
“Then someone copied my credentials.”
“That was our first assumption.”
She enlarged a section of the security log.
“The request did not originate in Australia. It came through a consulting network in Boston.”
“Which company?”
Linda hesitated.
“Northbridge Strategic Systems.”
I had never heard the name.
Rebecca looked up from her papers.
“Who owns it?” I asked.
“We traced the registration through two holding corporations,” Linda answered. “The final owner is Daniel Hale.”
For several seconds, no one spoke.
The same cousin who had forged my mother’s signature and attempted to seize her property had also attacked my company.
Daniel had not merely kept me occupied in Australia.
He had built a second trap beneath my feet.
“Show me everything,” I said.
Linda opened another set of files.
Northbridge Strategic Systems had received more than eight hundred thousand dollars through legal accounts controlled by Daniel’s law firm.
Most of the money had then been transferred to a former employee of my company.
His name was Nathan Price.
I recognized him immediately.
Nathan had worked in our cybersecurity division for nearly five years.
He was talented, arrogant, and increasingly careless.
Two years earlier, Linda discovered that he had copied proprietary code onto a personal device. We terminated him and threatened legal action if he attempted to use the material.
Nathan claimed the copied files were only for private research.
We had not believed him.
But because the data had never been distributed, the board decided not to pursue criminal charges.
It had seemed merciful at the time.
Now I understood that mercy had left a door unlocked.
“Nathan still had access to our systems?” I asked.
“Not officially,” Linda replied. “But he helped build part of the original authentication structure. He understood its weaknesses.”
Richard looked toward me through the screen.
“We believe Daniel hired him to create the delays.”
“What evidence do we have?”
“Payment records. Server logs. Travel records. And this.”
Linda opened an audio file.
The recording began with the sound of a chair scraping across a floor.
Then Daniel’s voice came through the speakers.
“Marcus must remain in Perth until the guardianship is approved.”
Nathan Price answered.
“I can create delays. I can’t guarantee how long they’ll keep him there.”
“Then create larger problems.”
“Every failure increases the chance of an outside investigation.”
“That is exactly what I want.”
I stared at the screen.
Nathan sounded uncertain.
“If the board thinks Marcus caused the problems, they could remove him.”
“That is the point.”
Rebecca moved closer to the table.
Linda continued the recording.
Daniel spoke again.
“After Evelyn is gone, trigger the final breach.”
Nathan remained silent for several seconds.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“You are being paid for technical work. Do not ask questions about my family.”
The recording ended.
The words remained in the room.
After Evelyn is gone.
The final breach had not been random.
It was supposed to happen after my mother’s death.
Daniel and Celeste had designed two disasters to strike almost simultaneously.
First, my mother would die from an overdose made to resemble a natural medical crisis.
Then the Perth facility would suffer a catastrophic software failure linked directly to my credentials.
While I flew home to arrange a funeral, my board would discover that I had apparently approved unsafe modifications.
My judgment would be questioned.
My position as chief executive would be threatened.
Our stock value would fall.
Celeste would file for divorce and claim I had become unstable, negligent, and obsessed with work.
Daniel would control my mother’s trust and property.
By the time I understood what had happened, my family, marriage, reputation, and company would already be collapsing.
They had not intended to steal one part of my life.
They had intended to erase all of it.
Richard broke the silence.
“Marcus, the board needs to know whether there are additional risks.”
“There are,” I said.
I told them about Celeste, Daniel, the forged documents, and the criminal investigation.
I did not show them the recordings of my mother’s abuse.
Those belonged to her.
But I explained enough for them to understand that the cyberattack was connected to a much larger conspiracy.
One of the directors leaned toward his camera.
“Why didn’t you inform us sooner?”
“Because I discovered the full connection less than an hour ago.”
“Your family crisis has now become a corporate crisis.”
Richard turned sharply.
“Marcus did not create this.”
“No,” the director replied. “But the attack used his credentials.”
I understood what he was really saying.
Even as a victim, I had become a liability.
“I will cooperate with any internal investigation,” I said. “Every device, account, and decision connected to me can be examined.”
Richard shook his head.
“That isn’t necessary.”
“It is.”
The board needed facts, not loyalty.
Daniel had survived for years because people confused personal trust with evidence.
I would not make that mistake again.
“Linda,” I said, “begin a full forensic audit. Do not limit it to the Perth facility. Review every system Nathan Price helped design.”
“That could require shutting down networks across three countries.”
“Then shut them down in stages.”
“It will be expensive.”
“Not as expensive as another breach.”
She nodded.
“I’ll start immediately.”
Rebecca wrote a note and slid it toward me.
Ask where Nathan is.
I looked back at Linda.
“Where is Nathan Price now?”
“We have been trying to locate him.”
“His home?”
“Empty.”
“Phone?”
“Disconnected.”
“Financial activity?”
“He purchased a ticket from Boston to Singapore.”
“When does the flight leave?”
Linda checked another screen.
“In one hour and twenty minutes.”
Rebecca was already reaching for her phone.
She contacted federal agents at Logan International Airport.
The board meeting continued, but I barely heard the discussion.
Nathan had technical knowledge, money, and evidence that could connect Daniel directly to the sabotage.
If he reached Singapore, finding him would become far more difficult.
Twenty-three minutes later, Rebecca received a message.
She read it and placed her phone on the table.
“They found him.”
“Where?”
“Inside the international terminal.”
“Did he resist?”
“No.”
Nathan had been sitting alone near the boarding gate with a laptop bag and two phones.
Federal agents stopped him before he entered the aircraft.
Inside his luggage, they found nearly seventy thousand dollars in cash, three encrypted drives, and a new passport issued under a slightly altered name.
At first, Nathan refused to answer questions.
Then investigators showed him the recording recovered from Daniel’s files.
He realized Daniel had preserved evidence of their conversations.
More importantly, he learned that the final software breach could have caused a serious industrial accident.
Daniel had told him the update would merely delay certification.
That was a lie.
The code interfered with automated emergency shutdown procedures.
Had the night team not detected it, workers could have been injured.
Nathan’s confidence disappeared.
By midnight, he had agreed to cooperate.
He gave investigators access to his encrypted drives.
The files contained emails, payment records, technical instructions, and private conversations with Daniel.
One message had been sent seven months earlier.
Keep Marcus occupied until the guardianship is approved.
Another had been sent after Rosa refused Daniel’s bribe.
Evelyn’s situation has become complicated. Extend the project delay.
Nathan had answered:
Customs interference will buy another month. The software failures can provide two more.
Daniel replied:
Do it.
The records proved that almost every major obstacle I encountered in Western Australia had been manufactured.
The equipment held at customs had been falsely reported as containing restricted technology.
The environmental complaint came from a consulting group funded by Northbridge.
The subcontractor who abandoned the project had received a payment from one of Daniel’s hidden companies.
Even the anonymous safety reports submitted to Australian regulators had been written from a computer Nathan controlled.
For months, I had fought fires Daniel deliberately started.
Each time I solved one problem, he created another.
He had watched me exhaust myself while my mother suffered thousands of miles away.
I left the conference room and stood alone beside a dark window.
Boston spread below me, filled with lights.
Rebecca approached quietly.
“You could not have known,” she said.
“I should have.”
“About the cyberattack?”
“About everything.”
“You trusted your wife and cousin.”
“That was my mistake.”
“No. Trust is not the crime.”
I looked at her reflection in the glass.
“Blind trust can still destroy people.”
“Yes,” she said. “But do not confuse being deceived with helping the deception.”
I thought about my mother’s unanswered calls.
The excuses Celeste had offered.
The strange expenses I had accepted because questioning them from Australia felt too difficult.
“I made it easy for them.”
Rebecca did not lie to comfort me.
“You missed warning signs.”
I nodded.
“But once you saw the truth,” she continued, “you acted.”
“After Rosa was injured. After my mother’s wrist healed incorrectly. After they nearly killed her.”
“And now Daniel is running out of places to hide.”
The next morning, the board issued a public statement.
The Perth facility had been targeted through criminal sabotage.
No customer information had been compromised.
No worker had been harmed.
The project would remain suspended until every system passed an independent security review.
My name was cleared from the fraudulent authorization.
But the damage to the company remained.
So did the damage to my family.
Later that afternoon, Detective Bennett called.
“We issued an arrest warrant for Daniel Hale.”
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
Officers had gone to his townhouse in Beacon Hill.
The front door was unlocked.
His passport remained inside the safe.
His clothing was still in the closets.
His computer had been removed.
His car was found near the Charles River.
A handwritten note lay on the driver’s seat.
Detective Bennett read it aloud.
“Marcus destroyed everything.”
The message was short.
Deliberate.
It made Daniel appear desperate.
Perhaps even dead.
Local police began searching the riverbank.
News reporters gathered near the abandoned car.
By evening, television stations were discussing the possibility that Daniel had jumped into the river.
I did not believe it.
Neither did Rebecca.
“Daniel does not blame himself,” she said. “He blames you.”
“The note isn’t a confession.”
“No.”
“It is a distraction.”
“Yes.”
I walked to the table and studied a map of Boston.
Daniel had lost control of Celeste.
Nathan had been arrested.
Peter Lawson was cooperating.
His accounts were frozen.
His law firm was being searched.
He had only one remaining priority.
Evidence.
Celeste had mentioned a storage unit registered under Peter’s name.
Detectives obtained the location and forced the lock.
The unit was empty.
Fresh marks covered the concrete floor where filing cabinets had recently stood.
Security footage showed Daniel arriving six hours before the warrant was issued.
He loaded four metal cabinets into a rented white van.
The van left the city shortly before dawn.
Traffic cameras tracked it west.
The final image showed it traveling toward Concord.
My mother’s old house stood in that direction.
The house where Daniel and I had spent our childhood summers.
The house he believed his father should have inherited.
The house containing my father’s private study and decades of family records.
I enlarged the image of the van.
“That is where he went,” I said.
Rebecca looked at the map.
“You cannot be certain.”
“I know Daniel.”
“You thought you knew him before.”
She was right.
But this time I was not relying on trust.
I was relying on evidence.
Daniel had removed the original records.
He needed somewhere private to destroy them.
Somewhere familiar.
Somewhere he believed he still had a right to enter.
I called Detective Bennett.
“Send officers to the Concord property.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel isn’t in the river.”
May you like
I looked at the last traffic-camera image.
“He’s inside my mother’s house.”
