Chapter 3 - LAUREN’S LAST DOWNLOAD
Kevin returned to Morrison Dynamics before dawn.
Annie remained at the mansion with the twins.
He had offered to bring in security personnel.
Jordan overheard and began shaking.
The boys associated unfamiliar guards with the night of the accident.
Annie promised to stay in Lauren’s room.
Kevin trusted her.
The realization unsettled him.
Six days earlier, he could not remember her last name.
Now he trusted her with the only two people he had left.
At headquarters, Kevin entered the executive data center with his chief security officer, Nolan Price.
Nolan had worked beside him since the company operated from a warehouse.
He was one of the few people Kevin still called a friend.
Kevin showed him Lauren’s access history.
Nolan frowned.
“She downloaded files from Project Atlas.”
“What is Atlas?”
“The self-driving freight program.”
“I canceled that program after Lauren died.”
“You canceled the public version.”
Kevin looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
Nolan opened a restricted network.
Project Atlas had continued under a subsidiary called Northline Mobility.
Morrison Dynamics still owned sixty-one percent.
The board had transferred control three days after Lauren’s funeral.
Kevin’s digital signature approved the transfer.
“I did not sign this.”
Nolan enlarged the authorization record.
The biometric verification came from Kevin’s hospital tablet.
On the night Lauren died, Kevin sat beside Jordan and Justin in the pediatric trauma unit.
Executives brought him documents.
He signed several without reading them.
One of those documents transferred Atlas.
“Who presented the papers?” Kevin asked.
Nolan searched the hospital visitor log.
Dr. Marcus Vale.
Kevin remembered Vale entering the waiting room.
The doctor told him grief could impair decision-making.
He offered to help manage urgent matters.
Vale handed Kevin a tablet.
Kevin had signed because his sons were crying behind glass.
The program’s original safety director was Lauren Morrison.
Her name appeared on internal objections.
She warned that Atlas navigation software failed to distinguish temporary barriers in heavy rain.
During private testing, three trucks crossed center lines.
One struck an empty passenger vehicle.
Lauren demanded the program be suspended.
The board refused.
Then she discovered executives were falsifying safety reports to secure a federal transportation contract.
“She was going to expose us,” Kevin whispered.
Nolan looked at him.
“She was going to expose them.”
“I was chief executive.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Then stop using their guilt to make yourself the center.”
The correction stung.
It was also deserved.
Lauren had not been fighting her husband.
She had been fighting men inside his company.
Kevin opened the final file she downloaded.
It contained an audio recording.
Lauren’s voice filled the dark data center.
“Marcus, if you send another vehicle onto public roads, someone will die.”
Dr. Vale answered.
“My role is behavioral risk assessment.”
“Your role is keeping witnesses cooperative.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“I sound informed.”
Then another man entered the conversation.
Kevin recognized him.
Samuel Cross.
Chairman of Morrison Dynamics.
His mentor.
The man who gave the eulogy at Lauren’s funeral.
“Lauren,” Samuel said.
“You are placing Kevin in an impossible position.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“If he learns what this board authorized, he will shut Atlas down.”
“That would cost thousands of jobs.”
“It might save lives.”
Samuel’s voice became cold.
“Sometimes a company survives because one person understands sacrifice.”
The recording ended.
Nolan searched for the original file.
It had been deleted from the central server.
Lauren’s download was the only remaining copy.
Kevin looked through the glass wall at the city beginning to wake.
“Who was driving the truck?”
Nolan opened the crash investigation.
The driver’s identity had been sealed because he supposedly died in the collision.
His body was never photographed.
No independent autopsy existed.
The death certificate was signed by Dr. Marcus Vale’s brother.
The driver was probably alive.
Then Kevin’s phone rang.
Annie’s number appeared.
He answered immediately.
Her voice was low.
“Mr. Morrison, someone is outside the house.”
“Who?”
May you like
“A woman.”
“She says her name is Claire.”
