Chương 6
“Fine.”
I pulled the chair closer.
“Mom voice.”
“That’s worse.”
“Did you have legitimate access to the records you copied?”
She stared at the plastic cup in her hands.
“That depends.”
My stomach tightened.
“On what?”
“On who is asking.”
“Me.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She put the cup down.
“If Marcus is calling federal investigators, then the answer needs to be exact.”
“That is what I am asking for.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“I work for a consulting firm.”
“I know.”
“We did efficiency modeling for a manufacturing subsidiary owned by Marcus’s company.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It wasn’t a secret.”
“You never mentioned it.”
“You never asked what project I was on.”
The rebuke was quiet.
That made it worse.
She continued before I could defend myself.
“I had access to operational cost data, procurement categories, plant scheduling, and some vendor reports.”
“Some.”
“Yes.”
“Were the payments you found inside the material you were authorized to review?”
“At first.”
“At first is not an answer I love.”
“I noticed three vendors with irregular cost patterns.”
“What kind?”
“Repeated invoices just under internal approval thresholds.”
That caught my attention.
“Same amounts?”
“Not exactly.”
“Same timing?”
“Mostly month-end.”
“Services rendered?”
“Consulting, maintenance coordination, logistics support.”
“Were those services real?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“So you checked.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Her jaw tightened.
“I used Marcus’s credentials.”
There it was.
I leaned back.
“Did he give them to you?”
“Not for that.”
“Chloe.”
“He had logged into his work account from our home computer before.”
“That is not the same as permission.”
“I know.”
“What exactly did you access?”
“Vendor approval records.”
“Anything else?”
“Internal emails.”
I shut my eyes briefly.
“Anything else?”
“One shared finance folder.”
“How did you get into that?”
“His account had access.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I used the saved password.”
I looked at the ceiling.
“Mom.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re judging.”
“I’m doing both.”
Her face hardened.
“He was stealing.”
“You suspected he was stealing.”
“I saw payments.”
“You saw suspicious payments.”
“Why are you talking like his lawyer?”
“Because if you blur what you know with what you believe, you make yourself easier to attack.”
Her visible eye filled with anger.
“Fine.”
She turned toward the window.
“Then don’t help me.”
“I did not say that.”
“You’re worried I broke a computer policy while my husband cracked my ribs.”
“Yes.”
The word stopped her.
I leaned forward.
“I am worried about all of it.”
Her mouth trembled.
“That doesn’t mean the injuries matter less.”
“It sounds like it.”
“That is because you’re hurt and scared and you want the world to sort itself according to what happened last night.”
“Would that be so unreasonable?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me.
I regretted the answer instantly.
But I did not take it back.
“Justice is not the same as simplification,” I said.
“There are things you may have done wrong while uncovering something worse.”
“Fantastic.”
“You need to tell Park the truth before Marcus tells his version first.”
“He already has.”
“Then you need to tell yours carefully.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Carefully.”
“Yes.”
“I was careful for three years.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
Her voice rose.
“I was careful at dinners when Sylvia corrected how I pronounced wine I didn’t even want.”
I stayed silent.
“I was careful when Marcus told people my salary because he thought mine made his look impressive.”
Her hands shook.
“I was careful when he stopped asking before reading my messages.”
I looked at her.
“He read your messages?”
“Yes.”
“Regularly?”
“At first he said it was because he’d been cheated on before.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
She wiped beneath her eye angrily.
“I was careful when he told me my friends made him uncomfortable.”
“How many friends do you still see?”
Her silence answered.
The room seemed smaller.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She gave me a tired, wounded look.
“You liked him.”
“I tolerated him.”
“You defended him.”
My chest tightened.
“When?”
“Christmas two years ago.”
I remembered the argument only after she said it.
Marcus had corrected Chloe at dinner over something trivial about mortgage rates.
She had snapped at him.
Later, while we washed dishes, I told her marriage sometimes required choosing which battles deserved oxygen.
At the time, it had sounded wise.
Now it sounded like a door I had helped close.
“I was wrong.”
She looked surprised.
“I should have asked why you were so angry.”
“Yes.”
“I should have asked more than once.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t.”
“No.”
There was no forgiveness in her voice.
I did not deserve immediate forgiveness simply because I had finally found the correct sentence.
The nurse entered to check Chloe’s temperature.
Neither of us spoke until she left.
Then Chloe said, “The copy isn’t at the house.”
“All right.”
“It’s not on a cloud drive either.”
I looked at her.
“Where is it?”
She hesitated.
Then she reached toward the hospital bag containing the clothes the staff had removed.
“My bra.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“There’s a microSD card sewn into the lining.”
For the first time all morning, I almost laughed from sheer disbelief.
“You sewed evidence into your bra?”
“Not evidence.”
She corrected me automatically.
“Data.”
“You are your mother’s daughter.”
“I’m not sure that’s comforting anymore.”
She asked the nurse for the bag.
A few minutes later, with Park present and gloves on, Chloe showed us the tiny hand-stitched seam beneath the padded edge.
Park stared at it.
“You planned this.”
“I planned for Marcus to find the obvious copy.”
“Which was?”
“A folder on my laptop.”
“And this was the backup.”
“Yes.”
“Why hide it on your body?”
“Because he searches bags.”
Park looked at me.
Neither of us needed to ask how Chloe had known that would matter.
The detective photographed the seam before allowing the nurse to cut the thread.
May you like
A card no larger than a fingernail dropped into a sterile specimen cup.
Park did not touch it directly.
