The napkin sat beside his laptop.
He told himself he was only curious.
He told himself he would search for fifteen minutes.
At 10:43 p.m., he was still searching.
Grant Meridian was publicly traded, which meant there were years of financial reports, investor presentations, procurement filings, vendor documents, and archived operational data available online.
Most of it meant very little to Daniel.
But logistics data did.
Eleven years inside transportation facilities had taught him how shipments behaved.
Real shipments were messy.
They were delayed.
Rerouted.
Partially loaded.
Rescheduled.
Cancelled.
Split.
Combined.
Human systems created patterns, but never perfect ones.
Daniel found three Grant Meridian subsidiaries with shipment-performance tables that were too similar.
He opened them side by side.
Same distribution dates.
Same load volumes.
Same routing intervals.
Same warehouse sequence.
Different company names.
Different regions.
Nearly identical underlying structure.
Impossible.
Daniel leaned closer.
Someone had not merely adjusted numbers.
They had copied old operational records and reused them.
He downloaded several archived spreadsheets attached to older vendor reports.
Years earlier, the transportation company where Daniel had worked used logistics software that generated a hidden template reference whenever a shipment schedule was duplicated.
Most employees never saw it.
Maintenance staff did because those identifiers appeared in diagnostic files whenever the system failed.
Daniel opened the document properties.
Nothing.
He tried another export.
Then another.
There.
A field labeled TEMP_ID.
814-37C.
Daniel opened a second file.
814-37C.
His pulse changed.
A third.
814-37C.
Three supposedly unrelated shipment groups contained the same hidden template identifier.
Daniel whispered, "Come on."
He searched backward.
Eventually he found the original.
The template had first appeared in records connected to a Grant Meridian warehouse listed as Dock 14.
The strange part was that more recent company disclosures claimed Dock 14 had never processed those shipments.
Daniel printed everything.
The printer was halfway through the final page when his phone rang.
11:58 p.m.
Unknown number.
Daniel answered.
"Hello?"
"It's Evelyn."
He sat up.
"How did you get this number?"
"Hotel contractor records."
"That's comforting."
"Daniel."
Her tone erased the joke.
"I'm listening."
"You need to stop looking."
He stared at the printed pages.
"Why?"
Silence.
Then Evelyn said, "Because someone knows."
Daniel stood.
"Knows what?"
"That I spoke with you."
"How?"
"I don't know."
"What happened?"
"I received a message."
His voice became quieter.
"What did it say?"
Another pause.
When Evelyn spoke again, her voice barely carried through the phone.
"They know about your daughter."
Daniel's entire body went still.
The next morning he arrived at Lily's school before the first bell.
He had barely slept.
Lily sat beside him in the pickup, hugging her backpack.
"You don't usually walk me all the way in."