Chapter 10
Nia’s phone stayed bright in her hand. The new signing location and the order to destroy the originals had left the room feeling smaller, though the lake beyond the windows stretched black and open beneath the moon.
“Don’t answer him,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to.” She locked the screen. “But he knows I have the log. He wants me frightened enough to hand him whatever’s left.”
David rested a hand on the binder. “That’s what the move is for. Keep everyone off balance until there’s nothing left to check.”
My phone began vibrating on the table.
The first call was from a partner on a development outside Charlotte. He didn’t ask whether the forged approval was real. He asked whether I’d been “sharing internal documents” with David and whether the project team should postpone our meeting.
I looked at the blueprints spread beside the binder, lines I had drawn and revised until the road, drainage, and homes all fit the land.
“If you want to postpone, that’s your choice,” I said. “But the work I delivered is still the work I delivered.”
There was a pause long enough to feel like an answer.
“We’ll be in touch,” he said, and hung up.
The second call went to voicemail. The third came from a client who had trusted me through two difficult projects. She sounded embarrassed to be asking, which made it worse.
“Grant’s telling people you were pushed out,” she said. “That you’re trying to hurt the company.”
“He’s telling people what he needs them to believe.”
“I’m sorry, Claire. We need to hold the next meeting until this is clearer.”
When the call ended, the villa was quiet except for the soft mechanical breath of the heating system. I watched the reflections in the window: my face laid over the lake, a familiar room made briefly strange by the fear in it.
A message appeared from a local business reporter asking for comment on an approval bearing my name. The attached image showed the page Grant had used to make the waterfront transfer look legitimate.
It was cropped tight around the signature. The stamp’s flawed edge was gone. So was the page margin where a version code would have appeared.
“Do you have the whole document?” I typed.
His answer came quickly. “The material I received shows the approval and your signature. Grant Whitmore describes you as a disgruntled former executive. Do you deny authorizing the transfer?”
I didn’t answer the accusation on his terms. I wrote that I had never approved the transfer and that the image he’d sent did not show the full page. I gave him no names and no details about the payment log, the trailer, or the people who had helped us preserve records.
Then I set the phone facedown.
David’s phone rang before anyone could speak. He listened without interrupting, his eyes fixed on the binder as his employer explained that an anonymous complaint had accused him of taking Whitmore records and using them improperly.
When he finally answered, his voice was calm enough to hurt.
“I didn’t steal anything.”
He listened again.
“No. I understand what you have to review. I’m not going to pretend this is easy for you.”
The call ended. David lowered the phone slowly.
“They haven’t decided anything,” he said.
“What did they say?”
“That someone sent them the same story Grant’s telling everyone else. That I took confidential files to help you damage Whitmore.” He rubbed his thumb over the edge of the binder. “They want me away from a client meeting tomorrow until they sort it out.”
I wanted to tell him I was sorry. It sounded too small, and he had not made this choice for me.
Instead, I said, “You didn’t have to stand beside me.”
“I know.”
His gaze held mine, steady but tired. “I’m still here.”
Sabrina had been staring at her hands. Now she reached into her purse and pulled out several pages, folded once down the middle.
“I wrote it before we came,” she said. “I didn’t know if I’d have the nerve to give it to you.”
She laid the pages on the table. Her signature was at the bottom, dark ink pressed hard enough to show through the paper.
The statement named what she had done: registered Morrow Strategic, signed for its account, and initialed invoices for work she knew the company had not performed. She wrote that Grant had called the payments a bonus and told her the invoice descriptions were how Whitmore processed them. She did not claim she had been innocent. She said she had not known the buyer, had believed the sale was approved, and had not known Grant used my name on the transfer approval.
“You can’t write around your part,” I said.
“I didn’t.” Her voice caught. “If I wanted to protect myself, I’d have stayed quiet.”
David looked down at the statement, then at his wife. Neither of them reached across the table.
Sabrina’s phone chimed.
She read the message. The color drained from her face, but this time she didn’t turn the screen away.
“Grant’s attorney,” she said.
“What does it say?”
She slid the phone toward me. The message said the records would show she created Morrow and signed the invoices. If she continued making accusations against Grant, he would identify her as the sole architect of the scheme and provide the documents to support it.
For a moment, all I heard was the lake wind pressing against the glass.
“He’s making sure you know the price,” I said.
Sabrina’s mouth tightened. “He’s making sure I know he already picked who to blame.”
Her signed statement lay between us, no longer an offer of help alone. It was a choice she’d made with the threat in front of her.
I slid the pages back to her. “You decide what you’re willing to stand behind. But don’t sign something just to make me believe you.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” she said. “I’m doing it because I helped him. And because I won’t let him say I invented all of it.”
She gathered the pages, but didn’t put them away.
My phone buzzed again. The reporter had sent a link.
The headline was already live:
May you like
WHITMORE’S MISSING MONEY: FORMER EXECUTIVE CLAIRE WHITMORE SUSPECTED OF LEAKING COMPANY RECORDS
Beneath it, my name stood in bold type, attached to a story I had never told.
