Chapter 17 - Project Lantern
The west archive occupied a narrow room behind the old training center. It held six years of boxed invoices, paper schedules, vendor contracts, and manuals for equipment that had been replaced before I became a supervisor.
Grace asked two people from the audit team to join us. We photographed the shelves before moving anything and recorded each box number as we opened it.
“Project Lantern,” Grace said, reading the labels.
The name appeared on a thin folder tucked into a carton marked Automation Pilot—Phase One. Inside were meeting notes, draft budgets, and an internal project chart.
The first page showed four workstreams: dispatch software, workforce transition, regulatory reporting, and vendor performance.
“Why would a logistics project include regulatory reporting?” I asked.
Grace turned another page. “Because the platform was designed to connect with compliance systems.”
The folder contained no bonus spreadsheet, but it did include a list of employees who had been assigned to the project. One name caught my attention: Kevin Rusk, the supervisor who had told me his access was changed after he raised concerns.
There was also a handwritten note beside the name of a Northline consultant:
KR believes reports don’t match field data. Do not include in next review.
Grace photographed it.
“That’s not proof of retaliation,” she said. “But it’s a lead.”
A second folder had been filed under the wrong year. Inside lay several printed emails between Victor’s finance office and Northline. The messages discussed a “success threshold” tied to automated dispatch volume. One email said, If human corrections remain off the main dashboard, we clear the threshold for the third-quarter incentive.
I read it again.
“Can they claim ‘human corrections’ means normal workflow?” I asked.
“They can claim anything,” Grace replied. “The question is whether the board understood the definition.”
At the bottom of the folder, we found the bonus spreadsheet. The total was larger than the invoices listed in the finance summary. Several payments had been routed through Northline Environmental, the vendor’s subsidiary.
Grace sat back. “We need a forensic accountant and legal review.”
The folder also contained a note from Blair to Victor. It was dated two months before the holiday crisis.
Keep the workforce impact out of the board packet until after renewal. The board will panic if the implementation looks incomplete.
I felt a mixture of anger and disappointment. Blair had known the transition was incomplete. Victor had known people were still correcting the system. Yet the company had continued reporting success.
“Do we know who wrote the anonymous note?” I asked.
“No,” Grace said. “And we won’t guess.”
I brought the documents to the audit office under a sealed evidence log. Kevin agreed to speak with Grace that afternoon. He remembered losing access after reporting that the dashboard understated how often supervisors overrode the software.
“I wasn’t fired,” he said. “They just made it impossible to do my job without asking someone else for permission.”
“Did anyone tell you why?” Grace asked.
“No. I was transferred to a day shift. It cost me my differential, and then my evaluations started saying I was resistant to change.”
He gave Grace the dates he could remember and offered copies of emails saved to his personal account. She told him not to send anything until legal staff confirmed how to preserve it.
When Kevin left, Marcus was waiting outside the office.
“Earl says a reporter called the facility,” he said. “She asked about the walkout and the missing records.”
“Did you answer?”
“I said I wasn’t authorized to speak for the company.”
“That was your choice.”
“She said she wanted to hear from workers, not executives.”
Grace stepped into the hall. “The audit team can’t tell employees what to say to a reporter. We can remind you not to share confidential customer information. Anything else is up to you.”
Marcus nodded, thinking it through.
That evening, Charles called an emergency meeting of the audit committee. Northline’s contract was suspended pending review, and Victor was asked to preserve all financial and communications records.
As I left the building, my phone rang from a blocked number.
A voice I recognized as Blair’s spoke before I could say hello.
“You’ve found the folder,” she said.
I stopped beside my truck. “What do you want?”
“To warn you. Project Lantern was never just about freight.”
The line crackled.
“What does that mean?”
“Ask Victor who approved the environmental reporting package. Ask him why the board never saw the separate invoices.”
May you like
Then the call ended.
I stood in the cold with the phone pressed to my ear. The folder had raised new questions. Blair’s call had added one that could change the entire investigation.
