Chapter 5 - THE SIGNATURE WASN’T FORGED THE WAY I EXPECTEDNo one had copied Marcus’s handwriting.
It was more sophisticated.
Whitmore used digital executive certificates.
Marcus’s co-authorization token had been reissued during a routine device migration.
A legitimate IT request.
Approved by—
a systems administrator named Peter Sloan.
No relation to Sloan Mercer despite the surname.
That became an early false lead.
Peter had followed a ticket.
Ticket requested by an executive-assistant account.
That account belonged to Preston’s former assistant:
Kendra Moss.
She left the company eight months earlier.
Her credentials should have been disabled.
They weren’t.
Why?
A deprovisioning error.
Sloan Mercer somehow obtained access.
Likely through Preston’s home printer archive, where an old onboarding PDF contained temporary credentials.
Ridiculous.
Plausible.
One forgotten document.
One active account.
One reissued certificate.
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Millions moved.
Security failures are often embarrassingly ordinary.
