Chapter 4 - The Ghost Protocol
My heart pounded against my ribs as I stared at Daniel in disbelief.
"That is impossible," I whispered.
"My husband Greg was the only other person who knew those security protocols."
Daniel rapidly typed on his tablet, desperately trying to freeze the massive transaction.
"The bank requires a live voice verification to authorize a transfer this large," he explained.
"Someone just used an audio recording of Greg's voice to bypass the security checkpoint."
A cold chill swept through my hospital room, making me shiver under the thin blanket.
Greg had died of a sudden heart attack a year ago.
Nobody else should have had access to those specific voice recordings or the account numbers.
"Can you trace the origin of the IP address?" I asked urgently.
Daniel nodded, his fingers flying across the digital keyboard.
"The firewall logged the exact location of the device used to initiate the theft," he said.
He turned the screen around so I could see the glowing red dot on the digital map.
The breath caught in my throat.
The signal was originating directly from my parents' house.
"My mother just left this hospital ten minutes ago," I reasoned.
"She could not possibly be home yet."
Daniel pulled up the property network logs and frowned deeply.
"The transfer was initiated by a device that has been hardwired into their basement for months," Daniel revealed.
He tapped another window on his screen to show the destination of the stolen funds.
"The money did not go into your parents' bank account, Mara," he said quietly.
"It was routed to a hidden offshore trust located in the Cayman Islands."
I felt a sickening sense of betrayal twisting in my stomach.
"Who owns the offshore trust?" I demanded.
Daniel opened the decrypted file and his eyes widened in shock.
"The primary beneficiary of the offshore account is your mother," he stated.
"But she is not the one who created it."
Daniel turned the tablet back around to show me the founding signature on the trust documents.
The signature belonged to my dead husband.
Greg had secretly created an offshore account for my mother before he died.
The two of them had been hiding millions of dollars from me.
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"I need a private investigator right now," I told Daniel.
"I want to know every single thing Greg and my mother did during the last year of his life."
