Chapter 3: The Forensic Counter-Attack
Forty-eight hours after the attack, the heavy glass doors of the ICU at Star Médica Hospital swung open. Daniel walked in, looking haggard, his clothes wrinkled from the long journey, his eyes bloodshot from a total lack of sleep.
He moved directly to the bedside where Regina lay, surrounded by tubes, monitors, and the steady, artificial rhythm of a ventilator. Her face was pale, and her lip was swollen from where she had been thrown to the floor. Daniel knelt by her side, gently taking her hand—the hand that still bore a tiny bruise where Veronica had twisted her thumb.
"I’m here, Regina," Daniel whispered, his voice cracking as he pressed his forehead against her knuckles. "I’m so sorry I wasn't there to protect you. But I’m here now. The babies are alive. They are beautiful. Our little boy and little girl are fighting, just like you."
As if hearing his voice through the deep fog of her sedation, Regina’s eyelids fluttered. The monitors beeped slightly faster. Slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes. It took her several long moments to focus on Daniel’s face.
The medical team quickly moved in to remove the breathing tube, as her vitals had stabilized enough for her to breathe on her own. Her first words were a raspy, desperate gasp: "The... the babies?"
"They are in the NICU, Regina. They are safe. The doctors say they are strong, just like their mother," Daniel said, kissing her cheek, his tears falling onto her pillow.
Regina let out a long, trembling breath, her eyes clearing as her sharp, analytical mind began to reassert itself despite the pain medication. She looked at Daniel, her voice growing stronger. "Carmen... Veronica... the file."
"Detective Reyes is on it," Daniel explained, pulling up a chair. "But they’ve vanished. They haven't returned to their homes, and their personal bank accounts have been emptied of cash. They are trying to use the forged power of attorney to clear out the $150,000 protection account."
Regina’s eyes narrowed. The forensic accountant inside her, the woman who had spent seven years taking down sophisticated corporate embezzlers, completely overrode her physical frailty. "They won't be able to do it online because I triggered the emergency mode," she whispered, coughing slightly. "The app locked the CLABE network for that specific routing number. They have to go to a physical branch. And they won't go to a standard teller."
Daniel leaned in closer. "What do you mean?"
"Carmen has a personal relationship with the senior regional director of Banco del Bajío in Juriquilla," Regina explained, her fingers tightening around Daniel’s hand. "His name is Mendoza. He owes her family favors from old real estate deals. If she presents the backdated, notarized power of attorney to him directly, he can manually bypass the automated security lock from the administrative terminal."
Daniel reached for his phone, his face darkening. "I’ll call the police and have them raid the Juriquilla branch immediately."
"No, wait," Regina stopped him, her analytical mind spinning out a trap. "If the police just show up, Mendoza will claim it was a bureaucratic misunderstanding, and Carmen and Veronica will flee across the border to the US. We need to catch them in the act of transmitting the funds. We need the digital forensic trail to be undeniable, linking the forged documents to the actual wire transfer."
"How do we do that from an ICU bed?" Daniel asked, amazed by his wife’s resilience.
"Give me your laptop," Regina ordered, trying to sit up, though a sharp pain in her abdomen made her winced. Daniel adjusted the bed pillows to support her.
Regina opened Daniel’s corporate account portal. Her fingers, though slightly shaky, moved with practiced ease across the keyboard. As a forensic accountant, she had created a secondary, hidden security protocol within Daniel’s trust account months ago, knowing his family’s predatory nature.
"I didn't just lock the account when I pressed the emergency mode," Regina revealed with a cold, sharp smile. "I turned it into a honeypot. If anyone tries to access the $150,000 using an administrative override, the system will look like it’s processing the request, but it will actually delay the transfer by exactly fifteen minutes while pinging the GPS location of the terminal being used."
She typed in a final command string, linking the bank’s security architecture to Detective Reyes’ tracking system.
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"Look," Regina pointed to the screen. A small red blinking dot appeared on a digital map of Querétaro. It was located exactly at the Banco del Bajío administrative offices in Juriquilla.
"They just logged in," Regina said, her voice dropping to a icy whisper. "They are using the forged signature right now. The fifteen-minute countdown has started. Call Reyes. Tell him he has exactly fourteen minutes to catch them with their hands on the keyboard."
