Chapter 6
I sent Mara the photograph before I could talk myself out of it.
Someone photographed your car in the garage. I have the plate. I’m not asking you to meet me. If you think Willa’s at risk, tell me what would help.
The message showed as read. No answer came.
I went back upstairs with the image burning in my phone and the contract folder still under my arm. My room smelled faintly of coffee left too long on the desk. I spread the Boston deal across the bed, then opened the inspection files I’d brought down from Chicago.
For an hour, I searched for a reason the documents should be in the same pile.
The contract’s safety certifications were meant to reassure investors that the waterfront project had passed inspection. The language was polished, the dates orderly, the signatures confident. I recognized none of the inspectors, but I recognized the mark they’d made.
A narrow loop, a hard downward stroke, then two quick lines crossing like a small X. It appeared beneath three different names on three separate certifications.
I laid the pages side by side. The signatures weren’t merely similar. The same dark blot sat at the end of each stroke, as if the pen had paused at precisely the same spot.
A scan could blur handwriting. It couldn’t explain why the same signature appeared under different inspectors’ names.
I called the project office and asked for the original reports. The person who answered said the files were in the project archive and that my access should be active. She sounded young enough to be worried about getting the answer wrong.
“I’ll check it myself,” I said.
Before I could open the archive, my phone lit up.
Mara: Tomorrow. Public park by the Common. Noon. No Willa.
I read it twice. She wasn’t offering trust; she was offering a place where nobody could corner her.
I wrote back: I’ll be there.
The next day came in cold and gray, with the damp kind of wind that crawled inside a coat. Mara sat on a bench near the path, her hands clasped around a paper cup. She looked past me once before I sat down, checking the walkers behind us.
“You sent me a picture of a car,” she said. “Not a name. Not an explanation.”
“I didn’t know what else to send.”
“You could have sent nothing.”
“I could have.”
Her gaze came back to mine. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I thought you should know someone was watching your car.”
Mara lowered her eyes to the cup. Steam slipped from its lid, thin and quickly gone.
“Was it Victor’s driver?”
“I recognized him. I don’t know who told him to take the picture.”
“Victor doesn’t need to give an order out loud.”
I looked toward the park path. A little boy in a red hat ran ahead of his father, laughing, while the father hurried after him with a scarf trailing from one hand. The sound hit somewhere tender and unwelcome.
“What was Claire investigating?” I asked.
Mara’s mouth tightened. “Why?”
“Because I found the same signature on different safety certifications in the Boston deal. Three inspectors, one handwriting.”
For the first time, she looked unsettled—not surprised, exactly, but as if a door she’d kept shut had started to move.
“She found that kind of thing,” she said. “Five years ago. Inspections that said a building was safe when the reports didn’t match what she saw herself.”
“Where?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Okay.”
The quickness of my answer seemed to catch her off guard. Her fingers tightened around the cup.
“She kept asking for copies,” Mara continued. “She’d say a page had been changed, or a signature didn’t belong. I didn’t understand the details. I just knew she was getting scared.”
“Of Victor?”
Mara looked at me as if the question itself were dangerous.
“She said he knew she’d found something.”
A wind gust sent dead leaves skittering across the path. One struck Mara’s shoe and lodged against the toe.
“Did she leave you anything?” I asked.
“No.”
It came too fast. Her face closed.
I could have pushed. I could have leaned on the five years of questions gathering behind my teeth and asked what she was still keeping from me. Instead, I looked at the contract folder beside my leg.
“I’m not going to tell you I can keep Willa safe,” I said. “I don’t know enough to promise that.”
Mara studied me, wary of the sentence and maybe of the man saying it.
“Good,” she said. “Because money and a company title don’t make a person safe.”
“I know.”
“No. You’re starting to know. There’s a difference.”
The words stung because they were fair. I had spent years believing that if I could secure a building, insure a risk, or make a call to the right person, I could control what happened next. Claire had called. I had been on the other end of a system I trusted, and I hadn’t heard her.
“What would you have me do?” I asked.
“Find out whether those reports are real. And don’t make Willa the reason you do it.” Mara stood. “She’s not evidence, Preston.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t have to understand today.” She picked up her cup. “You have to act like it.”
She walked away without looking back. I stayed on the bench until the cold began working through my coat, then took the contract and the duplicate signatures to the project office.
The archive occupied a locked records room behind the conference space. My badge had opened it the day before. Now the reader flashed red.
I tried again. Red.
A staff member came out, saw the pages in my hand, and stopped short.
“Mr. Calloway, your archive access was suspended this morning.”
“By whom?”
She swallowed. “Mr. Sloane’s office.”
I turned toward the glass conference room at the end of the hall. Victor stood inside, speaking to two men around a table. When he saw me, he finished his sentence, excused himself, and came out with his conference smile already in place.
“Preston,” he said. “You’re making a scene.”
“I’m locked out of my own project files.”
“Not yours. The company’s.”
“And the signing?”
“Sunday, as scheduled.”
I held up the certifications. “Three inspectors. One signature.”
Victor glanced at the pages and then at my face. The smile didn’t move, but something behind it hardened.
“Those documents have been reviewed.”
“By whom?”
“People who understand the project.”
“I want the original inspection files.”
“You don’t have access.”
“Restore it.”
“No.”
For a second, neither of us moved. Beyond the glass, the two men at the table pretended not to listen.
Victor stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You’re letting a personal matter cloud your judgment. I won’t let you put this deal, or this company, at risk over speculation.”
He had taken the files from my reach before I knew there was anything to take. Now he was standing between me and the proof.
“You can lock me out of an archive,” I said. “You can’t make those signatures disappear.”
May you like
Victor’s eyes stayed on mine.
“Watch me,” he said. “The signing goes through Sunday—with or without your approval.”
