I stared at the blinking green lights on the servers.

My hands were still cold, so I rubbed them together to try to get the blood flowing.

To keep myself from panicking, I stood up and walked over to the desk.

A large terminal screen was active, displaying a diagnostic dashboard of the estate’s private network.

My background was in forensic accounting, not network security, but numbers and data patterns were universal.

I looked at the data streams flowing across the screen.

The system was tracking external data transfers.

I pulled the rolling chair out and sat down, my eyes scanning the columns of IP addresses and data packets.

Something caught my eye.

A series of outgoing encrypted files had been sent from this very network just twenty minutes ago.

I leaned closer, my heart starting to beat faster against my ribs.

The files were disguised as routine system backups.

But the destination address was a private server I recognized from my time analyzing Derek’s offshore accounts.

The transfer hadn’t come from the outside.

It had been initiated from a terminal inside this house.