Chapter 5
David found the address on the Morrow Strategic paperwork just after midnight. It led not to an office, but to a private mailbox in a row of shops near the marina.
“I’ve seen that number before,” he said.
The binder lay open between us. Outside, the lake was a dark sheet broken by the occasional sweep of a dock light. I looked from the address to his face.
“Sabrina used it for her consulting mail,” he said. “Before I knew anything about Grant.”
He didn’t say how many years he’d watched her collect envelopes from that box. He didn’t have to. The hurt was there in the way he kept his voice level, as if one careless word might split something he was still trying to hold together.
I sent Sabrina a message. She answered after six minutes: a time, a place, and no greeting.
The café was tucked between a boat-rental office and a chandlery, its front windows fogged from the coffee machine. I arrived first and chose a table where I could see the entrance and the marina slips beyond it. The cinnamon smell from the pastry case fought with the sharp tang of lake water whenever the door opened.
David sat across from me, the binder between his shoes.
“You don’t have to be here,” I said.
“I know.”
His answer was gentle, but his hands had closed around his coffee cup. I let the subject drop.
Sabrina came in wearing a pale coat and dark glasses, though the morning was overcast. She spotted us, paused, then crossed the room. For one instant her gaze landed on David. He didn’t rise.
She took the chair beside me.
“You said this was about the records,” she said.
“It is,” I replied. “The Morrow Strategic address is a private mailbox you used.”
Her face went still. “David told you that?”
“I found it,” he said.
Sabrina’s fingers tightened around the strap of her purse. “It was convenient. That’s all.”
“Convenient for what?” I asked.
She took off her glasses and set them on the table. Her eyes were rimmed red, but her voice had the practiced steadiness of someone who had rehearsed an answer in the car.
“Grant asked me to register a consulting business. He said he needed somewhere to put legitimate outside work while Whitmore reorganized.”
“Did you register Morrow Strategic?”
“Yes.”
The word dropped between us, small and solid. Sabrina glanced toward the window, where a gull stood on the railing with its feathers lifted against the wind.
“Did you know it was billing Whitmore?” David asked.
“I knew Grant said the company would pay for consulting.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
She looked at him then. For the first time, the practiced steadiness slipped.
“I didn’t know what was in every invoice.”
“Did you know the work listed on them had never happened?”
Her lips parted, then closed. That pause wasn’t proof of an answer, but it changed the shape of the silence around the table.
“I didn’t check every description,” she said at last.
David’s thumb moved once around the rim of his cup. “You registered a company and didn’t check what it billed?”
“Grant said he had the work covered.”
“Covered by whom?”
“I don’t know.”
He leaned back. The chair scraped against the wood floor, louder than it should have in the nearly empty café. His eyes dropped to the binder by his feet, then returned to Sabrina’s face.
“I kept telling myself you were unhappy,” he said. “That you’d made one terrible choice and were trying to get out of it.”
Sabrina flinched.
“I was trying to build a life,” she said.
“With him?”
“With someone who made me feel like I still had a future.”
David’s expression broke—not into anger, exactly, but grief that had stopped hiding behind good manners. He looked down at his hands.
“You could have told me you wanted to leave.”
“I know.”
“You could have left before you helped him.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do.” His voice roughened. “You let me keep believing the worst thing you’d done was fall in love with my friend.”
Sabrina’s face paled. She reached toward him, then stopped when he moved his cup out of her reach.
I felt the impulse to soften the moment, to give each of them an exit. But an exit would have been another kind of lie. So I stayed quiet and watched the muscles work in David’s jaw as he swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say.
Sabrina turned to me. “Grant told me this was how he’d get us out.”
“Get you out of what?”
“Whitmore. His debts. All of it.” She lowered her voice. “He said the waterfront parcel was going to sell quickly. The money would give us a fresh start.”
The signing notice on Grant’s phone came back to me: eight o’clock the next morning. The water beyond the glass seemed suddenly less like scenery than a boundary someone had drawn and meant to cross.
“You knew he was selling the parcel?” I asked.
“I knew he said it was happening. I thought the company had approved it.”
“Did he tell you who was buying?”
She shook her head. “He said a broker was handling the buyer.”
“Which broker?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know the sale is real?”
“Because Grant said it was.” Her voice sharpened, defensive now. “He told me the paperwork was done.”
David gave a short, disbelieving breath. “And you believed him.”
“I wanted to.”
There it was—the first honest thing she’d said that didn’t defend the business or Grant’s version of it. Her fingers had begun worrying the paper sleeve around her cup, tearing it into a thin strip.
I kept my voice quiet. “Sabrina, if you know anything else about the sale, now is the time to say it.”
“I don’t know the buyer’s name.” She glanced toward the window again. “I only heard Grant say it was hidden behind a broker.”
A shadow crossed her face. She looked past me, out toward the slips.
“What?” I asked.
Sabrina went rigid.
May you like
Across the marina, a man stood beside a dark sedan, watching the café. Even through the glass, I recognized the way he held himself: shoulders squared, chin lifted, as if every place he entered had already been measured for his use.
Grant was watching us.
