2. Erik #2
Makari's phone vibrates once. He reads the screen and moves toward the side table where we keep the clean laptop for campus systems. "Aaron Whitaker missed his interview.
" Aaron is Blackthorne's senior staff accountant responsible for the athletic and donor accounts.
He was due in my office at five with vendor crosswalks. It's twenty minutes past now.
"No call?" Makari's face answers before he does.
Makari opens the security portal and enters credentials from a card no campus employee knows exists. "No call. His office says he left for the interview. Finance building cameras first."
Peter abandons the coffee while Liya moves behind Makari's chair.
I stay where I can see the screen and the door while Makari pulls the hallway feed from the finance building.
Students pass with backpacks. At four-fifty-one, Aaron Whitaker exits the records corridor carrying a banker's box against his ribs.
Liya leans closer. "I need that frame." She sees the writing while Makari stops the feed. Aaron's face is angled toward the exit, but the box faces the camera. Black marker runs across one side in block capitals.
J. Bennett.
The writing isn't Aaron's. I've spent three weeks with Jeremy Bennett's signatures, initials, and margin notes. The letters on the box are older, heavier at the start of each stroke. Jeremy marked it himself.
Peter leans in with the right question first. "Where did that box come from?"
Makari checks the camera angle. "Records corridor, restricted storage, and access logs will tell us which room."
I look at him. "I want those logs." Makari is moving before I finish.
He nods once. The file exports, and Makari keeps the video moving. Aaron crosses the lobby, ignores a security aide, and pushes through the exterior door with the box against his coat.
I shift beside Makari. "North lot." Aaron would use the closest exit, and he's already switching cameras. The lot feed opens on glare off windshields. Aaron's sedan reverses from the second row at four fifty-four, then takes the campus road toward Ashford Pike.
Ninety seconds later, a black Escalade rolls from a visitor space near the tree line. Makari zooms, corrects the plate, and catches the driver turning toward the exit camera.
Rahil Antonov.
Liya steps away from the table with the portfolio. "He's early."
Peter turns to me. "He's on time for whatever Orell planned. You wanted movement, and you've got it."
I look at Rahil's profile on the screen.
Orell doesn't send him for errands, not when Rahil collects debts and removes witnesses.
Aaron left with a box marked in Jeremy Bennett's hand, and Rahil followed him less than two minutes later.
Rowan Bennett, who doesn't know Aaron is missing, has put herself between her father's name and every camera.
I give Makari the first order. "I want Aaron found."
Makari starts the export. "How loud?"
I give him the boundary. "Quiet enough that campus security doesn't know why. Loud enough that every traffic camera between here and the state line becomes available."
Liya closes her portfolio. "I can call the foundation drivers. If Aaron took Ashford Pike, somebody may have passed him near the west entrance."
I look at her phone. "You use personal phones, not foundation email."
Peter reaches for his own because he wants the old answer. "I have two men in Willimantic."
I turn from the screen. "No. Your men are known to Zaitsev crews. I want no one near Aaron who can turn this into a street argument."
Peter doesn't like it, but he understands it. "You think Rahil is bringing him in for tea?"
"I think Aaron matters more alive than dead until I know what was in that box." I button my jacket. "Makari, I want a quiet watch on Rowan Bennett."
He doesn't look away from the laptop. "What does quiet mean?"
I give him the limits before Peter can turn them into an argument.
"Quiet means no contact, no interference, and a two-person team off campus. If she goes to her family, they watch the perimeter. If anyone tied to Orell approaches, they call you."
Peter gives me the look he saves for decisions he thinks are sentimental. "That's a protection detail."
I keep my attention on Makari. "It's surveillance."
Liya places the visitor badge back on her coat. "It can be both." She leaves no kindness in it.
Makari closes the export window and finally looks at me. "Which instruction is strategy, finding Aaron or watching Rowan Bennett?"
I pick up my phone. Makari waits while Peter watches me over the coffee.
I give them nothing. After a few seconds, Makari sends the footage to a secure drive and leaves by the side door.
Caldwell's suite sits below us, where he can keep calling this donor exposure. Orell has used a private university because respectability makes people lazy. He has moved dirty money through athletes with rent due and financial officers trained to sign what arrives in the correct format.
Jeremy Bennett signed. I need to know whether he was guilty, careless, or useful to people who understood the system better than he did.
My phone rings before I can call Makari. His name appears on the screen, and I answer on the first ring. "Where's Aaron?"
Makari doesn't waste words. "Aaron's phone stopped transmitting at five-thirty-four somewhere in the Ashford area. After that, it went dark completely."
Liya turns toward me. Peter stops with his hand on the door.
"Was it powered down?" I ask, because the timing matters more.
"Maybe. It may have been destroyed, shielded, or moved somewhere with no signal. We're pulling tower data now."
I keep the phone at my ear. "What about Aaron?" Liya stops behind me.
Makari's answer comes back clean. "No hospital intake under his name and no campus report. His car hasn't crossed the east highway camera."
Below us, students cross the quad while their scholarships remain frozen. None of them knows Aaron Whitaker is missing. Makari gives me the rest. "Wherever he is now, he doesn't want to be found, or someone doesn't want him found."