Chapter 6 - A Witness Changes Her Story
By the time Nina let us into her office, she had slept less than either Daniel or me.
A paper cup sat untouched beside her keyboard. On the screen, lines of text crawled past in a narrow window, most of them unreadable.
“It’s opening,” she said. “Not all of it. The backup is damaged.”
Daniel stood behind her chair, one hand gripping the strap of his old laptop bag. He didn’t ask what the files contained. He watched Nina work, as if one impatient question could make the screen go dark.
A list appeared: dates, account codes, inventory numbers. Nina leaned closer.
“These are transfer instructions,” she said. “Equipment and client files. Some of the dates match the period when Eric took over access.”
“Do they show where anything went?” I asked.
“Not yet. The recipient fields are missing, or they’re in another part of the archive.” She tapped a line on the screen. “But this was prepared before Daniel lost his login.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened. He didn’t look away from the dates.
“Can you save it?” he asked.
“I’m making a copy.”
A knock sounded at the office door. Nina glanced toward it, then at me.
“Could be Luis.”
She went to open it. It was only the building manager, carrying a package. Nina signed for it and returned without opening the box.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. She looked at the screen.
“Luis says he’ll meet you,” she told me. “He doesn’t want to come here.”
“Where?”
“A coffee shop on Elston. He used to go there after work.”
Daniel shifted his weight. “I’ll come.”
Nina looked from him to the doorway. “He might not talk if he sees you.”
“I understand.”
He said it without protest, but his fingers had gone white around the bag strap.
“I’ll go,” I said. “You stay with Nina.”
Daniel nodded once. He didn’t ask me to promise what Luis would say.
The coffee shop was mostly empty, its front windows clouded by damp coats and the heat from the radiators. Luis sat at a table in the back, turning a paper sleeve around his cup. He was broad-shouldered, with graying hair and a red line pressed into one cheek, as if he’d been wearing a headset too long.
When I gave my name, his eyes moved to the door behind me.
“Daniel isn’t here?”
“No.”
Luis let out a breath. “Good. I don’t know if I could look him in the face yet.”
I sat across from him. “Nina says you made a statement about an incident between Daniel and Rebecca.”
“I did.”
“Did you see it?”
His hands stopped moving around the cup.
“No.”
The word landed between us with a small, hard weight.
“I heard about it from Eric,” Luis continued. “He said Daniel had threatened Rebecca in front of one of the boys. Said it was part of a pattern, that people at the company had been covering for him.”
“You signed a statement describing it as if you knew what happened.”
“I signed what Eric wrote up.” His face reddened. “I should’ve read it more carefully. I should’ve said I didn’t see anything.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wanted to keep my job. Then Eric said the company was already in trouble and people who weren’t loyal would be the first to go.” Luis looked down at his cup. “I told myself I was repeating what I’d been told. It sounded different on paper.”
He pulled out his phone and unlocked it. His thumb hovered over the screen before he turned it toward me.
The message was from Eric.
Don’t call it an argument. Remember Daniel as dangerous, not merely angry. If anyone asks, you know what kind of man he is.
I read it twice.
“Did you write back?”
“I said I understood.” Luis swallowed. “I didn’t. Not really. But I sent that.”
He showed me the reply. Three words, no excuse attached.
I understand.
“Will you tell Nina the same thing?” I asked.
“I’ll tell her what I told you. I can’t promise what I’ll do if Eric calls again.”
“That’s honest.”
“It’s not brave.”
“No,” I said. “But it’s more honest than the statement.”
His eyes dropped. “Daniel did say something scary, didn’t he?”
I didn’t answer for my son. “He told me what he said.”
Luis nodded slowly, as if that mattered more than an easy denial. He slipped the phone into his pocket.
“I’ll talk to Nina,” he said. “I’m not saying I’ll go anywhere else. But I’ll correct what I signed.”
When I returned to Nina’s office, Daniel was at the window, watching traffic crawl past under a low gray sky. He turned when I came in.
“What did he say?”
I told him. I repeated the part about the statement, then read Eric’s message aloud.
Daniel listened without interrupting. His shoulders rose slightly at the word dangerous, then settled again.
“So he never saw it,” he said.
“No.”
Daniel looked down at the laptop bag hanging from his hand. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t say what I said.”
“I know.”
“I said it in front of Caleb.” His voice roughened, but he kept it steady. “Luis changing his story doesn’t take that away from him.”
Nina had turned from the computer. She didn’t rush to fill the silence.
Daniel rubbed his thumb along the bag’s worn seam. “I want the truth to help me. I just don’t want to use it to pretend I did nothing.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the hum of Nina’s computer and the soft hiss of tires outside. My son had been carrying the worst thing he’d said as if admitting it meant he had to carry everything else alone, too.
Then the office door opened.
Eric walked in with a man in a charcoal suit. Eric’s gaze went first to Daniel, then to Nina’s screen.
“Turn that off,” he said.
Nina rose from her chair. “You can’t come in here and give orders.”
The man beside Eric set a folder on the edge of her desk. “I represent Dalton Systems. My client has reason to believe company information was copied without authorization.”
“Your client has reason to believe a lot of things,” Nina said.
Eric stepped closer to the desk. He looked tired, but his voice was smooth. “Those files belong to the company. Hand them over.”
Nina didn’t move.
The attorney opened the folder. “We’re requesting that you surrender every copy and refrain from accessing or distributing any company material.”
“Requesting?” I asked.
The attorney’s eyes shifted to me. “If necessary, we’ll pursue formal action.”
Eric gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “You’re making this much worse than it needs to be, Nina.”
“Worse for whom?” she asked.
His expression changed, just for a beat. Then he looked at Daniel.
“Your father has already dragged you into enough trouble. Don’t let him drag her in, too.”
Daniel took one step toward him. I touched his sleeve—not to hold him back, but to remind him I was there.
Daniel stopped himself.
“Luis corrected his statement,” he said.
Eric’s gaze sharpened. “Luis doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“He told us you described an incident you never saw,” I said. “Then you told him to remember Daniel as dangerous.”
For the first time, Eric’s composure slipped. His eyes flicked to Nina’s screen, then to the attorney.
The attorney closed the folder. “We’ll be in touch.”
Eric lingered at the door. “Be careful what you think you’ve found.”
Nina held his gaze. “I am.”
They left. The door clicked shut behind them, and no one spoke until the sound of their footsteps faded.
Nina returned to her computer. “I saved what I had before they came in.”
She brought up the archive index and searched the attachment name from Daniel’s cached email. One row appeared, marked as missing from the backup.
Then Nina frowned.
“Wait.”
She clicked into the file history. A second entry appeared beneath the missing attachment: a copy made on the same date, logged to removable media.
“Separate drive,” she whispered.
May you like
Daniel set his old laptop bag on the desk.
Nina stared at the new line on the screen. “Someone saved the attachment somewhere else.”
