Chương 6
“Did you know this was coming?”
Mark did not respond immediately.
That pause stayed between them.
Finally, he said, “I knew there was a review.”
“A review.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
Mark’s eyes hardened.
“You were part of the problem.”
The words landed harder than Daniel expected.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you stopped listening.”
Daniel laughed once.
There it was.
The thing he had not expected.
Not anger.
Not betrayal.
A strange, empty disappointment.
“I spent half my life building this place.”
“And that’s exactly why this is difficult.”
“No.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You don’t get to make this sound like you’re doing me a favor.”
Mark stood.
For the first time, the tiredness disappeared from his face.
“You think I wanted this?”
“I think you wanted it enough.”
The room went quiet.
Outside the office, someone dropped a stack of folders.
Neither man moved.
Mark lowered his voice.
“There were missing reports.”
Daniel frowned.
“What?”
“Financial reports.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Mark looked directly at him.
“You don’t.”
Daniel felt something cold settle in his chest.
“What reports?”
Mark opened the folder.
Inside were printed emails, spreadsheets, and notes.
Daniel recognized his own handwriting on one page.
A meeting date.
A list of concerns.
A signature.
His signature.
But the numbers underneath were wrong.
Not slightly wrong.
Wrong enough to change everything.
“That isn’t mine,” Daniel said.
Mark watched him carefully.
“You signed it.”
“I signed the review page.”
“You signed the document.”
“I did not approve those numbers.”
Mark said nothing.
Daniel picked up the paper.
His fingers tightened around the edge.
“When did you get this?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“And you waited?”
“We investigated.”
“You investigated me.”
“We investigated what happened.”
Daniel looked at the pages again.
There was something familiar about them.
Not the numbers.
The formatting.
The way the columns were arranged.
The small mistake in the footer.
A mistake he had seen before.
His stomach tightened.
“Who prepared this?”
Mark did not answer.
“Who prepared it?”
“Daniel.”
“Who?”
Mark looked toward the window.
“Your son.”
The room changed.
Not dramatically.
Nothing fell.
Nobody shouted.
But something inside Daniel moved.
“My son?”
“Evan.”
Daniel slowly put the papers down.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Evan doesn’t work here.”
“He did.”
Daniel stared.
For a moment, he could not understand the sentence.
“He worked here temporarily.”
“Six months.”
“He was an intern.”
Mark looked at him.
“He had access.”
Daniel felt a familiar pressure behind his eyes.
The same pressure he had felt at his father’s funeral when everyone kept telling him to be strong.
He hated that phrase.
Strong was often just another word people used when they wanted you to stay quiet.
“Where is he?”
Mark did not answer.
“Where is my son?”
“I don’t know.”
That was somehow worse.
Daniel walked out of the office without saying anything.
The hallway seemed longer than it had five minutes earlier.
People looked away.
Some looked concerned.
Some looked afraid.
He passed his own desk and stopped.
The plant on the corner had a yellow leaf.
He had noticed it last week and kept meaning to bring water from home because the office water dispenser tasted like metal.
A ridiculous thought.
A completely useless thought.
Yet there it was.
His brain choosing a dying plant over the fact that his son’s name had just appeared in a company investigation.
Sarah found him standing there.
“What happened?”
Daniel did not answer.
She waited.
That was why he trusted her.
She did not fill silence just because silence made people uncomfortable.
Finally, he said, “They found something.”
Her face changed.
“What?”
“Something connected to Evan.”
Sarah looked down.
Only for a second.
But Daniel saw it.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You knew something.”
She crossed her arms.
“Daniel.”
“Sarah.”
The way he said it stopped her.
She looked older suddenly.
Not older in years.
Older in exhaustion.
“Evan came to me,” she said.
“When?”
“Before he left.”
Daniel felt his anger rise.
“Before he left?”
“He was scared.”
“My son was scared and you didn’t tell me?”
“He told me not to.”
Daniel stared at her.
“That was your decision?”
“No.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“It was his.”
The hallway noise continued around them.
Phones ringing.
People talking.
A printer spitting out pages.
The world refusing to stop.
“What did he say?” Daniel asked.
Sarah looked toward the conference room.
“He said he made a mistake.”
Daniel waited.
“And?”
“He said someone was going to make sure the mistake looked like his fault.”
The words stayed there.
Daniel looked back at his office.
At the termination notice.
At the papers accusing his son.
For the first time that morning, the humiliation disappeared.
Something else replaced it.
Fear.
Not the fear of losing his job.
Not the fear of losing his reputation.
A different fear.
The kind that came when someone you loved had walked into a room you could not follow and left the door open behind them.
“Where did he go?” Daniel asked.
Sarah swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
Daniel reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
There were no messages from Evan.
No missed calls.
Nothing.
He stared at the blank screen longer than he should have.
Then the phone vibrated.
One new message.
Unknown number.
Daniel opened it.
There was only one sentence.
Stop looking for me if you want me to stay alive.
Mara did not go home immediately.
She walked three blocks past her apartment building and kept walking until the city became less familiar.
She passed a bakery closing its doors, a man dragging a stack of cardboard boxes behind a restaurant, and a couple arguing quietly beside a parked car.
Nobody looked at her twice.
Nobody knew her name.
For the first time in months, that felt almost comforting.
May you like
She stopped outside a small park that she usually ignored.
There was a bench near the entrance with peeling green paint and a metal plaque that had faded enough that she could no longer read the words.
