Chapter 5 - The Decryption
By 2:00 a.m., my hospital room had turned into a makeshift war room. Eleanor was sitting in the visitor’s chair, nursing a cup of terrible vending machine coffee, while I balanced my laptop on my chest, my fingers flying across the keyboard.
Maya had delivered the USB drive and burner phone safely before going back to Emma. Now, it was up to me.
“He encrypted the drive with AES-256,” I muttered, staring at the password prompt. “It’s military-grade. If I try to brute-force it, it’ll wipe the data after ten failed attempts.”
“Can you guess it?” Eleanor asked, leaning forward. “Think like him. Narcissists rarely use random strings. They use things that matter to them.”
I tried his birthday. Incorrect. I tried his mother’s maiden name. Incorrect. I tried his favorite sports team and the year they won the championship. Incorrect.
Seven attempts left.
“He doesn't care about anything but money and himself,” I said bitterly. “What about his first big sale at the company? Or his employee ID?”
I typed in his corporate ID combined with the word "Success." Incorrect.
Six attempts left. My hands began to shake. If I locked this drive, we would lose the only leverage we had. Caleb would paint me as a paranoid, disabled wife, take my daughter, and leave me destitute.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to remember the day I left my accounting firm. Caleb had been so smug, so proud of himself for "retiring" his wife. He had bought a bottle of expensive champagne.
“To the new era,” he had toasted. “Caleb Davis, sole provider.”
I opened my eyes.
I typed in: CalebDavisProvider1!
The loading bar spun for what felt like an eternity. Then, the screen flashed green.
Access Granted.
A folder appeared on my desktop. I clicked it, opening a massive spreadsheet. As my eyes scanned the columns, my jaw dropped. My old accounting instincts flared to life, instantly recognizing the pattern.
“Eleanor,” I breathed, pointing at the screen. “He’s not just gambling. He’s embezzling.”
Eleanor stood up, squinting at the numbers. “Explain it to me.”
“He works as a regional director for a logistics company. He’s been setting up phantom vendor accounts. The company pays these fake vendors for services never rendered. But look at the routing numbers…”
I cross-referenced the numbers on my phone.
“The money isn't going into his account. He’s routing the stolen funds through the empty shell of my old, inactive LLC—the one I used for freelance bookkeeping before Emma was born. He’s laundering the money, and he’s framing me for it.”
The silence in the room was heavy. Caleb’s plan was brilliant and utterly evil. If the embezzlement was ever discovered, the paper trail led directly to Rebecca Davis. He would play the shocked husband whose wife was secretly stealing millions.
“He drained our savings and took out the second mortgage to pay off whoever broke into the house tonight,” Eleanor deduced, her eyes wide. “He got in deep with loan sharks, and the embezzlement wasn't enough to cover it. The USB drive is his personal ledger, keeping track of everything.”
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“He was going to let me take the fall,” I whispered, staring at the screen. “He tried to pull me out of this bed, not just to save money, but to get me home so he could control me before the police caught on.”
Eleanor smiled, but it was a terrifying, shark-like grin. “Well. It looks like Caleb Davis just handed us the rope to hang him with.”
