THEY MOCKED HER CLOTHES AT THE INTERVIEW

Victor did not answer immediately. He walked to the glass wall of his office and looked over the orchard blocks turning silver in the afternoon sun. Then he returned to the smaller table and told Taylor what he actually knew.

The message had come from Graham Voss, the company's chief financial officer. Graham had worked for Robert Anderson for nineteen years. He understood every lender relationship, every seasonal cash crunch, and every reason the company survived the winter between harvests. Victor had relied on him after his father's death because there seemed to be nobody else who knew the machinery.

“Then he can explain the numbers,” Taylor said.

“He should be able to.”

“Should isn't the same as did.”

Victor's mouth tightened. “No. It isn't.”

He called the company's general counsel, Priya Desai, with Taylor still seated in front of him. He did not pretend she was an employee or ask Priya to make a confidentiality problem disappear. He described the accidental exposure of the report, the limited corrections Taylor had pointed out, and the need to establish lawful access before anyone showed her another page.

Priya arrived fifteen minutes later. She wore practical black flats and carried a yellow legal pad instead of the expensive leather portfolio Taylor had expected. She asked Taylor to describe exactly what she had seen. Taylor did, resisting the urge to turn the interview into a performance.

“A spreadsheet can contain a bad formula without anyone stealing,” Priya said.

“Absolutely,” Taylor replied. “But a good formula using one total and a printed report showing another tells me we need the source, not a story about a typo.”

Priya looked at Victor. “I'll authorize an independent accounting firm to supervise a narrow diagnostic review. Miss Nelson can be a paid temporary analyst under that engagement if the firm agrees. No customer-identifying data beyond what's necessary, no personal device downloads, and all work preserved in the review workspace.”

Taylor exhaled slowly. Those were the conditions she'd wanted but hadn't known how to demand without sounding difficult.

They agreed on a two-day rate that made her blink twice. Priya insisted on documenting compensation before work began. A security officer escorted Taylor to a separate workstation and created a temporary account with limited permissions. Her first assignment was not to find a thief. It was to reproduce the printed summary from the underlying records and write down every assumption she made.

On her bus ride home, Taylor stared at the contract on her phone. She had worked twenty hours that week at the grocery wholesaler, covering for a supervisor whose wife had just had a baby. She had expected this interview to give her a second income, enough to stop choosing which bills to pay late. Instead, she had two days in a building where the finance chief already seemed to dislike her.

Margaret Nelson was waiting at the kitchen table when Taylor arrived. The sewing machine sat beside a stack of altered work trousers. Their apartment smelled of tomato soup and hot iron.

“Well?” her mother asked.

Taylor set the handbag down and told her everything, including the laughter. Margaret reached for the frayed cuff of her own sweatshirt.

“They laughed at my seam?”

“At my jacket.”

“Same difference.” Margaret's voice was light, but her expression wasn't. “Did you get the job?”

“Not exactly. A two-day paid review.”

Taylor held out the contract. Margaret put on her reading glasses and examined the amount. “Lord have mercy. Are they paying you to find the missing eighteen thousand?”

“They're paying me to find out whether it's missing at all.”

Her mother folded the paper with care. “Good. Don't let anybody sell you a conclusion before you see the facts.”

Taylor laughed softly. “Where did you learn that?”

“From sewing. Half the customers who say a zipper broke have been forcing it for six months. The other half got a bad zipper. If I assume which one they are, I ruin the dress.”

Taylor's laughter faded when Margaret slid an envelope across the table. It was a notice from the apartment manager: the rent would increase at renewal. Margaret's alterations barely covered her medication and groceries. Taylor's wages paid the rest.

“We don't have to decide tonight,” Margaret said quickly.

“We need to decide soon.”

“We will. Just don't take a job that makes you lie to keep a roof over our heads.”

The next morning, Taylor arrived in the same navy jacket. She'd brushed it until the fabric looked almost new. Brooke Keller was by the elevator, holding a paper cup.

“Miss Nelson.” Brooke's eyes dropped to the sleeve and quickly returned to Taylor's face. “I'm sorry about yesterday.”

Taylor pressed the elevator button. “Which part?”

Brooke opened her mouth, then closed it. “The comment about your clothes.”

“I accept that you said you're sorry. I still need to know whether the company will do anything about it.”

Brooke looked startled. “Victor spoke to Melissa.”

“That isn't the same as fixing it.”

The elevator arrived before Brooke could answer.

Upstairs, the independent accounting firm's manager, Noah Kim, explained the review. He had already made a clean copy of the source report in a restricted workspace, with an automated record of every change. Taylor reproduced the total. It was indeed eighteen thousand two hundred dollars too low on the printed page, but the detail lines still flowed into percentages calculated from the correct amount.

“The report's presentation layer has an override,” Noah said, pointing at an embedded adjustment field.

“Who can change it?”

“Three named users and a system service account.”

Taylor resisted the temptation to guess which one mattered. She instead matched the original shipping entries to the invoices they supposedly represented. Two entries charged the North Orchard region for one refrigerated trailer on the same date. Both carried the same trailer number, but different invoice identifiers.

“Is it a cancellation and reissue?” Noah asked.

“Could be. Let's look for a credit memo.”

There was none. One invoice was paid to a long-established trucking firm. The other had been paid to a vendor called Cypress Transit Partners, incorporated only eight months earlier. The unusual part wasn't the amount. It was the description: emergency temperature protection, exactly eighteen thousand two hundred dollars.

Taylor leaned back. “The variance isn't necessarily the amount stolen. It may be the adjustment used to keep somebody from seeing this particular charge.”

Noah nodded. “Write that as a hypothesis, not a finding.”

By lunch, they had established that Cypress's invoice had bypassed the ordinary three-way comparison of purchase order, receipt, and invoice. The exception carried an approval under Graham Voss's credentials.

Victor appeared at the review room's door, but Noah stopped him before he entered.

“You asked for independence,” Noah reminded him. “You get a progress briefing at five, not a look over her shoulder.”

For the first time, Taylor saw somebody tell the billionaire no and survive it.

She returned to work. On a separate page of the vendor ledger, she found Cypress's address. The street was in downtown Fresno, inside an office building where dozens of small businesses rented mailboxes.

An address proved almost nothing. Taylor entered it in the review notes, then clicked the supporting delivery receipt.

The receipt showed a truck arriving at North Orchard at 2:17 a.m.

It also showed a handwritten signature from someone named Teresa Salazar.

Taylor recognized the name. Teresa had delivered produce to Taylor's former grocery wholesaler for years. She was punctual, meticulous, and notorious for keeping her own paper logs.

Taylor looked at Noah. “Can we verify this with the actual driver through the proper process?”