“Two hundred thousand. From Pinnacle Power Corporation.”
I hung up and opened my laptop. It took me less than an hour to piece it together. Sarah had been hired as a senior environmental consultant for something called the Horizon Energy Complex, a new natural gas facility Pinnacle was building just outside Moundsville, three miles from where Riverside used to stand.
The contract was worth $850,000 total. Two hundred thousand up front. Three hundred thousand after initial deliverables. The rest upon project completion.
For a twenty-two-year-old with barely a year of experience.
I pulled up the EPA public database and searched for Horizon Energy Complex. Seventeen filings had been submitted over the past six months. Environmental impact assessments. Air quality certifications. Water discharge permits. Soil contamination reports.
Every single one of them was signed by Sarah Warren Caldwell.
I clicked through the documents, my hands shaking.
The emissions data didn’t make sense. Readings that were impossibly clean. Water quality reports that contradicted other public records. Compliance certifications for equipment that hadn’t even been installed yet.
They were fake.
And Sarah had signed them.
I kept counting, kept clicking through the database.
Fourteen documents. Fourteen forged certifications. Fourteen signatures.
I sat back in my chair, staring at the screen.
Fourteen.
The same number of men who died at Riverside.
I pulled up the original site plan for Horizon Energy Complex, the one filed with the State Planning Commission eighteen months earlier. Companies always filed preliminary plans before construction. The original plan showed twelve operational zones: four turbines, three compressor stations, two storage facilities, two control centers, one maintenance building.
Twelve zones.
Standard for a facility this size.
But the compliance documents showed fourteen zones.
I cross-referenced the maps. Harrison had split the two control centers into four separate units. There was no technical reason to do that. Control centers were always managed as single units. Splitting them created redundant paperwork, additional inspections, higher costs.
Unless he wanted exactly fourteen zones.
Fourteen zones requiring fourteen compliance reports.
Fourteen reports requiring fourteen signatures.
One for every man who died at Riverside.
He’d engineered it deliberately. He’d redesigned the entire compliance structure around that number.
It wasn’t a coincidence.
It was a message.
Harrison knew who Sarah was. He’d known all along.
And this was his revenge.
Making my daughter complicit in the same kind of cover-up that had killed her father. Making her sign her name fourteen times, once for each man who died because of him.
It was cruel. It was calculated.
And Sarah had walked right into it.
I picked up my phone and called her.
No answer.
I called again. Voicemail.
I tried five more times over the next two hours. Then I texted: I know about Horizon. I know about the money. We need to talk now.
She didn’t respond.
I called Linda back. “Can you check if there have been other deposits?”
