Chapter 36
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The press conference was a massive success, rallying public support and forcing a judge to immediately deny Croft’s request to freeze Clearview’s accounts. But the victory was short-lived. Two days later, a subtle, highly disturbing anomaly appeared within the foundation’s internal operations.
Rachel walked into Emily’s office, carefully closing and locking the door behind her. She looked more rattled than Emily had ever seen her.
"Emily, we have a leak," Rachel whispered, dropping a physical logbook onto the desk.
"What do you mean?" Emily asked, sitting up straight. "I thought you took the network offline."
"I did," Rachel explained, her voice tight with anxiety. "The digital network is totally secure. But this is human error. Yesterday, we moved Chloe from the primary intake room to the secondary safe house across town for better security. We only wrote the address on a physical piece of paper. Less than three hours later, a black Omni-Tech security van was spotted idling outside that exact safe house."
Emily’s heart skipped a beat. "Croft found her physical location. He didn't hack a computer. He hacked a person."
"Someone inside this building is feeding him information," Rachel concluded grimly. "Only five people had access to that physical file: You, me, Nathan, Robert, and a junior paralegal named Mark who filed the transfer paperwork."
Emily felt a profound sense of betrayal, but she instantly clamped down on her emotions. She needed facts, not feelings.
"Mark has been with us for two years," Emily noted, recalling the quiet, hardworking young man who often stayed late to help survivors fill out restraining orders. "Why would he betray us to a man like Croft?"
"I don't know," Rachel said. "But we have to fire him immediately before he leaks anything else."
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"No," Emily said, a brilliant, dangerous strategy forming in her mind. Katherine's words echoed in her head: Let his own momentum pull him to the ground.
"If we fire Mark, Croft will just find another way in, and we won't know where the attack is coming from," Emily explained, her eyes sharpening. "But right now, we know exactly who the mole is. Mark is our direct line to Damian Croft. We are going to use him to deliver the bait."
