Chapter 1
At the company party, I won a cash prize of 300 thousand dollars.
Excited, I went to the bank to deposit it, but the teller's face suddenly changed.
"Counterfeit. All of it is fake!" she shouted.
I froze. "No way! The company just gave this to me. How could it be fake?"
The teller sneered, "Still playing dumb? You'd know if it was fake. There isn't one real bill in the whole 300 thousand dollars. Do you think this bank is run by idiots?
"First time I've seen someone so reckless."
I had a bad feeling, and my heart was pounding faster and faster.
"I don't believe it. Give it back to me. I'll go deposit it at another bank," I said.
The teller rolled her eyes. "Give it back to you? Counterfeiting is a serious crime. You and the money are staying here until the police arrive."
With that, she called the police on the spot and had security block the door.
My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was about to explode, but I couldn't help but laugh.
Honestly, I suffer from severe paranoia.
I'd already run through this kind of scenario in my head ninety-nine times.
*****
The police arrived quickly.
The officer in charge was a young man named Ryan James.
The teller, Amanda Shaw, immediately approached him and handed over a stack of forms.
She said, "Officer James, these are our branch's cash counting records.
"And the counterfeit currency seizure certificate.
"The cash this customer brought in was tested multiple times by the machine, and all of it is counterfeit."
All of it.
She emphasized those two words.
Three hundred thousand dollars, and it weighed over six pounds.
Not even one real bill?
I knew something was off, but I never imagined it would be this crazy.
Backstage at the company party, I handled every bill myself.
After ten years as a finance director, counting cash is in my blood.
Three hundred thousand dollars, every bill fake, and I hadn't caught it?
But I gritted my teeth and kept quiet.
Having dealt with this for years, I've learned one thing:
When the whole world lined up against a person, the one shouting about being wronged was the one who looked insane.
I stood up, steadying myself against the stainless steel chair in the lobby.
I said, "Officer, I'll fully cooperate with the investigation.
"But I have one request."
Ryan paused his note-taking. "Go ahead."
"I want to check the seal numbers on the cash we're talking about," I said.
That was common sense.
Every bundle of cash just issued by the bank has a unique serial number on its seal.
If this really was the cash I brought straight from the company party, the seals on those bundles should match the bank's original codes exactly.
Simple as that, if the codes are off, it means a swap happened.
Amanda's smile faltered for just a split second.
It was just half a second.
But I caught that reaction.
"Sorry," Amanda said, chin held high. "This cash is now evidence in the case. Evidence has to be secured right here.
"Nobody can touch it unless both the branch supervisor and the police give permission."
She gave me a pointed look. "Especially you."
Then she smirked at Ryan, her eyes full of smugness.
"Officer James, she's asking to handle the evidence, she's probably trying to get rid of it," Amanda said.
She'd pinned it on me fast and clean.
I hadn't so much as touched the money, and I was already the prime suspect for tampering with evidence.
Ryan didn't say anything right away.
He took the seizure certificate Amanda handed him and examined it closely.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Two burly security guards stood blocking the bank's entrance, one on each side.
The branch manager, wearing a white shirt and a red tie, was making polite gestures to the other customers in the lobby.
He announced, "Sorry, everyone, but we've got an emergency. The branch is closed for now.
"Please use the side door to leave."
But nobody moved.
The whole scene was a hundred times better than anything on TV.
A bunch of aunties whipped out their phones, aiming their cameras right at my face, not even trying to be subtle.
So where did that leave me?
I was trapped inside the bank.
The cash was seized at the counter.
Even my bank account got a message: [Transaction Restricted.]
Anybody normal would have fallen apart right about then.
But I wasn't panicking at all.
I was sick, and badly sick.
Every day, I imagined somebody setting me up and putting me away.
To fight those thoughts off, I'd built a contingency plan for every way I could be framed.
Three months of it, day after day.
With all those phones pointed at me, I kept my voice steady, even I was surprised at how calm I sounded.
"Since I can't touch the cash," I said, keeping my composure.
"Then, I request that Ms. Shaw, right here in front of Officer James, write down the serial numbers, packaging status, and the names of everyone who handled each bundle for the record."
Ryan nodded. "That's a reasonable request. Ms. Shaw, please cooperate."
Amanda bit her lower lip, clearly tense.
She grabbed her pen, reluctantly opened the seizure certificate, and started scribbling, her annoyance written all over her face.
Staring through the bulletproof glass, I locked my eyes on the top right corner of that sheet.
There was a row of minuscule, machine-printed numbers.
[System timestamp: 14:07.]
My heart skipped a beat.
I knew exactly when I walked into this bank.
It was 14:15.
Before I went in, I snapped a pic of the stone lion out front, with the time stamped right on it.
It was what I do every single day before I leave the house.
At that point, I still had eight minutes before I even walked in.
So how had my cash been seized eight minutes before I walked through the door?
I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, saved the file on my recorder, and started a new one.
I wasn't planning to expose the time gap just yet.
There was no way the police would miss something that obvious.
Before I could ask Ryan to keep a copy of the certificate, something happened at the counter.
The computer screen behind the glass flickered.
Amanda's eyes went to it, and the tension went straight out of her shoulders.
"Oops," Amanda said, acting casual as she tapped away. "Just a little hiccup with the system clock.
"Routine maintenance, so a little data lag is normal.
"Looks like it's back to normal now."
Peering through the glass, I checked the screen.
The timestamp now read [14:22.]
In the blink of an eye, the loophole was patched up.
Someone in the bank's back office was altering the data with admin privileges.
They'd cast a wide net.
But I kept quiet, just watching Amanda's smug face.
She could change it all she wanted.
She could change every last line of it.
I had the photo with the original timestamp in my pocket, and my recorder, running since I got out of bed.