Ellen didn’t hesitate. “I’ll contact her after two. She sleeps in the morning after the night shift.”
“An email confirmation will suffice then. I’ll attach the contact point in the follow-up paperwork.”
“Fine,” Ellen said, “I can vouch for Lena. She wouldn’t let anyone in.”
Marise nodded. “That’s what I expected to find. Thank you for your cooperation.”
She stood, gathered the file, and left the office without looking back.
Once in her car, Marise sat thinking. If Ellen was right and Lena was clean, they were back to square one. She needed to start digging.
As soon as she returned to her apartment, she made a cup of coffee then opened her laptop. If Lena and Edith were innocent, and her gut feeling told her they were, then she’d have to find out who EW was.
She typed‘EW Enterprises + New York’into a private browser. Three hits popped up. An engineering firm in Buffalo, a shipping startup and a clothing line. She narrowed the search parameters: limited liability, scientific patents, filed in the last month.
Nothing.
She tried again, searching the patent database for the entity's registration. Still nothing. Whoever had filed the paperwork had done it through a shell. Probably a legal intermediary in Delaware or the Caymans. They knew how to cover their tracks.
After two hours, she slammed her laptop shut, totally frustrated.
It was time to call Lapwing.
She used the encrypted line, typing a single ping into the message client:Need eyes. EW Enterprises. Urgent. Possible shell.
It took three minutes before the screen pinged to life.
LAPWING:Busy evening. What you offering?
MARISE:Double fee. Someone's running an IP scam off stolen energy tech. Serious stuff.She sent off a copy of Kathleen’s letter regarding the patent claim.
LAPWING:Now you have my attention. Hold. Tracing...
She watched the text window fill with rapid-fire queries and code. Lapwing was routing through three overseas ports and into obfuscated ownership registries.
LAPWING:EW Enterprises LLC. Registered in BVI through two layers. Payment trail leads to an anonymous fund in Zurich.
LAPWING:Nothing unusual yet. But...
Another pause.
LAPWING:There's a listing on D-Sink. Hidden node auction. High-stakes, closed network. Black-tagged assets labelled "Project Florabite."
Marise's blood ran cold. Ted said that was the code name for the energy plants.
MARISE:Florabite is the name of Knowles’ research.
LAPWING:Figured. Auction has proprietary tech bundles, genetic data, energy harvest diagrams. Nothing she would've published.
MARISE:Can you trace the upload point?
LAPWING:Already trying. Encryption is dense. Seller's masked with cascade proxies. But the wallet is traceable.
It was slow work. Twenty minutes passed. Lapwing sent fragments as he pried open blocks of anonymized code and rerouted through compromised nodes in Eastern Europe.
LAPWING:Bingo. Wallet pinged to a drop shell in NY. Used by high-value traders. But guess what? I traced a funding trail.
Marise leaned forward, staring at the screen.
