“We’re taking this to the bank.”

The specialist examined it without dismissing where it came from.

He asked which details Zoe had compared and which I had personally verified, and I walked him through the dates and the names and the differences between Chad’s messages and his documents while he made his own notes.

He asked if I had contacted the recipient.

No.

“Good.

Don’t try to resolve this with anyone connected to the transfer.” Because it was an international SWIFT transfer, he said, there was a clearing period, and that gave him a chance to escalate before completion, though he couldn’t promise the outcome.

He checked a box, added the warning to the file, and placed a small orange sticker on the cover — a color I had not seen before.