“Excellent.”
Three Hydra Securities guards walked in tow as Buckhard escorted Alex towards the meeting room. They descended three stories underground by the elevator. It opened to a sterile, chrome-walled hallway and equally shiny white tiled floor. Alfred Dahl and his team were waiting in the conference room.
The first order of business was paperwork. Lots of it. Dis
closures. Contracts. Waivers. Information would be treated with the utmost secrecy and failure to do so would result in massive penalties and lawsuits. After they had cleared the paperwork out of the way, Alex pulled a stack of hardcopies from his briefcase. He pushed them towards Alfred Dahl, the head of Hydra Securities. “One of these men is trying to extort us for ten million dollars and has threatened the well-being of a female employee.”
Dahl opened the folder and examined the suspects’ dossiers with a detached expression. He carefully read each one and seemed to be making a mental note of the suspects. There were fifty-five Whitewater security specialists currently contracted by the firm. Ten of them were granted with Level A clearance, which meant they knew the true nature of the Larousse brothers and the working of the supernatural underground world in Manhattan.
Among the ten people, Alex trusted three of them with his life. Todd Johnston, the head of the firm’s security. George Danielson was practically Alex’s shadow. And Harris Jay Wyatt, the man in charge of Gabriel’s personal bodyguards. The three of them knew the Larousses like Alex knew the back of his hand. Alex couldn’t think of a reason why they would want to blackmail him for ten million dollars. Last year, the firm had paid twice that amount to Johnston, Danielson, and Wyatt in salaries and bonuses. Alex needed Alfred Dahl and his team to clear the three trusted security specialists before he could move on to identify the blackmailer.
“What is the nature of the extortion?” Dahl asked.
Alex explained everything. Dahl’s face didn’t show the slightest emotion when Alex admitted he and his brothers weren’t mere humans.
“How did the blackmailer contact you?”
“Letters, then phone calls. The third letter was delivered in a postal box by a courier. I was contacted by phone to transfer the sum into an offshore account. I traced the call and got an address. I followed the man from that address and we had an altercation.”
“And you fell into the river.”
“That is correct.”
“Who had security access to your personal computer and files?”
“My brothers.”
“How about Mr Johnston, Danielson, and Wyatt?”
“None of them have access to our personal files. Only work related in the office.”
“Could they have hacked it?”
“They were former special forces. Handpicked selectively by the Whitewater expert recruiter. Johnston, Danielson and Wyatt are better at hacking bodies than hacking computers. Besides, they don’t have the motive to extort us.”
“Ten million dollars is a lucrative amount of money, Mr Larousse.”
“True. But they are paid beyond well. My brother doesn’t hesitate to buy out the loyalty of his men with a high price tag.”
“What about your other employees?”
“The administrative people don’t have access to the security. Not even the IT department. Our programme runs on a separate platform. Whitewater originally designed it, but after they handed it to us, we modified the accesses and the protocols. My brother Renaud implemented his software design on the platform. It’s a cutting-edge system. It has to be an inside job to be able hack it. I want you to find out who it is.”
Dahl made notes with his tablet. His team did the same on theirs.
“What about the young lady…” Dahl glanced at his notes. “Beatrice Summer. Did she receive any form of protection after the blackmailer implied she would come to harm in the event you refuse to cooperate?”
It just occurred to him that he should have put a personal detail on Bea after he had received the threat. But he suspected one of his own men as the blackmailer and the personal detail would do more harm than good, raising unnecessary attention. Bea didn’t know he was secretly attracted to her. “I transferred her from a mail room clerk to my receptionist. She doesn’t know anything about this. I prefer to keep her in the dark.”
Dahl jotted down more notes. “What is the nature of your relationship with Ms Summer?”
Alex stiffened. “She is a person of my interest.”
“How big an interest?”
He was uncomfortable with the question but neither could he avoid it. “Enough to be used as leverage.”
“I suggest you consider putting her under a personal detail. We would be happy to provide you with such a service. A team of two would suffice, with twelve-hour shifts to observe her safety.”