Chapter 8: Victor’s Price
We were still outside the diner when Miriam called back.
“Victor Hale wants to meet tonight,” she said. “He says Travis has accused him of authorizing the transfer on his own.”
Claire’s face tightened beside me. The diner’s neon sign buzzed over the door, painting the wet sidewalk red. Somewhere inside, a waitress laughed, and the ordinary sound made the words on my phone feel even uglier.
“Does he deny it?” I asked.
“He denies acting without Travis’s direction. That’s not the same as denying he prepared the transfer.”
“Good,” Claire said quietly. “At least he’s not pretending his hands are clean.”
Miriam heard her. “He says he has routing correspondence. I told him we’d meet at my office, and that he should bring the originals.”
“Is he bringing a lawyer?”
“He says he isn’t. I told him he can call one before he comes. I also told him I can’t offer him protection from consequences.”
The line went quiet for a beat.
“Are you going?” Miriam asked.
I looked at the evidence Claire had just sent, then at the dark stretch of street beyond the diner. I had spent months letting other people decide which version of me sounded plausible. I wasn’t going to let Victor deliver his version without hearing it.
“Yes.”
Miriam’s office smelled faintly of coffee and printer toner. Claire sat near the door, arms crossed, while Miriam set a clean legal pad in front of her. I chose the chair with its back to the wall. The choice embarrassed me, until I remembered what it felt like to hide beneath Travis’s desk and hear my name spoken like a tool.
Victor arrived carrying a thin leather folder. His tie was loose, his hair damp from the rain, and his expression had the pinched look of a man who had spent the drive rehearsing what he could admit.
He glanced at Claire.
“You too?”
“I entered the false access records,” she said. “You don’t get to be surprised by the people whose names you used.”
Victor looked away first. He sat opposite me and placed the folder on the table, but kept one hand on it.
“Travis told the company I prepared this without proper authorization,” he said. “If that story stands, I’m the one who looks like I diverted three-point-four million dollars.”
“You did prepare it,” I said.
“Yes.”
The answer came quickly. It didn’t make him honest. It only made denial harder.
“Did you see me sign?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did I tell you to move the money?”
“No.”
“Did I send you an authorization?”
He pressed his lips together. “Not directly.”
Miriam’s pen moved across the pad. “Then tell us what you did receive.”
Victor opened the folder. Inside were draft transfer instructions, a printed email chain, and a page with several boxes filled in. He turned the first sheet toward me.
The receiving name was Harborline Development Partnership. Beneath it, a smaller line identified its managing member: Fenwick Project Management LLC.
Travis’s name appeared beside the word manager.
I read the line twice. The partnership wasn’t some independent project waiting at the end of a legitimate transfer. The money was being routed through an entity Travis managed.
“You knew this,” I said.
“I knew he managed it.”
“While telling people the transfer was for an unrelated development?”
Victor’s fingers tightened on the folder. “He said it was a temporary bridge. That the partnership needed the funds to close a deal, and Northgate would be repaid.”
“Did you check?”
“No.”
The bluntness hurt more than a polished excuse might have. It meant he understood exactly how little he had done to protect anyone but himself.
“Travis told me you had approved the transfer,” Victor continued. “He said your signature was on the authorization. I accepted that as true.”
“You accepted his word as my signature.”
“I accepted it as authorization.”
“You never spoke to me.”
“No.”
“You never saw me sign.”
“No.”
The room’s heater clicked on with a dry metallic snap. I watched his hand rest beside the papers and thought of my own hand signing the supplier guarantee years ago. At the kitchen table, Travis had stood behind me with one palm on my shoulder, calling it the first thing we were building together.
Now that genuine signature had been lifted from an old promise and placed beneath a new one.
“You prepared the transfer anyway,” I said.
Victor nodded. “Yes.”
“Why tell us now?”
“Because Travis told company counsel I acted alone. He’s making sure there’s a clean story if anyone asks questions.”
“And you want me to make sure that story doesn’t land on you.”
“I want the instructions reviewed accurately.”
Miriam leaned forward. “You’re asking me to protect your cooperation from being presented as a confession.”
“I’m asking you to document who gave the directions.”
“Those aren’t the same thing,” I said.
“No,” Victor replied. “They aren’t.”
At least he didn’t ask me to believe he had suddenly grown a conscience. He wanted a record that might keep him from being sacrificed. His motive was plain, and so was the use I could make of what he had brought.
Miriam drew the printed email chain closer but didn’t touch the folder. “If these are original messages from your account, I need the complete set. Not selected pages. I also need to know if there are attachments or later instructions.”
“There are later instructions,” Victor said.
My stomach tightened.
“Then we need those too,” Miriam replied.
Victor’s eyes moved from her to me. “I can give you the original routing correspondence. It shows Travis directed the transfer and supplied the claim that Eliza had approved it.”
“And in return?” I asked.
“I want your side to make clear I didn’t invent the authorization.”
“You did your part in preparing it.”
“I know.”
“You could have stopped when you realized there was no direct approval.”
“I could have,” he said. “I didn’t.”
For the first time, he sounded less like a man negotiating and more like someone looking at a decision he couldn’t make smaller.
“I won’t call you innocent,” I said. “But if the correspondence is real, I’ll make sure it doesn’t disappear.”
Miriam watched me carefully. She didn’t correct me or soften the offer. This wasn’t forgiveness. It was a choice to use a partial truth without handing Victor my trust.
He slid the folder across the table.
As Miriam began checking the pages, Victor’s phone lit up. He looked at the screen and went still.
“What is it?” I asked.
He turned the phone so Miriam could read it. The message was from Travis, sent less than ten minutes earlier.
Victor’s mouth had gone dry. “He already dispatched the wire instructions.”
Miriam’s gaze snapped to the email printout. “The release is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
“It was,” Victor said.
May you like
He tapped the screen, opened the latest message, and placed the phone beside the draft instructions.
“He may have moved it forward.”
