Chương 8
“You should take the Ortega woman’s money,” Teresa said.
“No.”
“You need a lawyer.”
“I have Nina.”
“For now.”
“I’m not taking money from a woman I met while she was lying on a sidewalk.”
“You met her brother in an elevator.”
“Technically Sofía did.”
Teresa lowered her voice. “You think refusing help makes you less vulnerable?”
“It makes one thing clean.”
“One thing. Great. We’ll frame it and hang it over the eviction notice.”
Laura set down the knife.
Teresa’s expression changed immediately. “That was ugly.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re scared.”
“So are you.”
“I don’t get to spend your money because I’m scared.”
“You’ve spent mine before.”
“And paid it back.”
“Mostly.”
Laura looked toward the table. Sofía was erasing a word so hard the paper had begun to tear.
Teresa followed her gaze.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said.
Laura hated those words. They often meant the speaker had no idea how.
Still, after dinner she accepted the groceries.
Javier spent his suspension in a borrowed office at the outside law firm, answering questions about every payment control he had approved during the previous three years.
The investigators were polite in the way people became when documenting possible negligence.
Why had GlobalTech allowed executive authorization tokens to remain active outside company premises? Why were vendor bank changes approved by a single executive credential after secondary review? Why had Javier signed quarterly control certifications despite repeated internal-audit warnings about shared administrative accounts?
He remembered the warnings.
He had not ignored them exactly. He had accepted management’s remediation plans, approved deadlines, and moved to the next urgent matter. There was always another acquisition, budget gap, forecast, lender call, or board presentation.
The weakness had remained open for eleven months.
“Who owned remediation?” an investigator asked.
“Beth Kline.”
“Who supervised Beth?”
“I did.”
“Did you verify completion?”
“I reviewed her report.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Javier looked through the conference-room window. Beyond the glass, a junior lawyer carried three cups of coffee and a stack of binders without dropping either.
“No,” he said. “I did not independently verify it.”
The investigator wrote the answer.
During a break, Inés called.
She had been ordered to rest, an instruction she treated as an insult. In the background, cabinet doors opened and closed.
“What are you doing?” Javier asked.
“Resting near the refrigerator.”
“You’re supposed to be on the couch.”
“The couch has no yogurt.”
“Daniel can get it.”
“Daniel cut grapes for me this morning. He has become unbearable.”
Javier leaned back in the conference-room chair.
“Did you use my name?” she asked.
“For what?”
“To help Laura.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would damage her credibility.”
“You sound like her.”
“That isn’t a compliment.”
“It is from me.”
He turned his steel wristwatch around his arm, a habit his father used to correct by tapping his knuckles.
“Inés, do you remember the leadership retreat last month?”
“The one where you ignored my calls because Graham had everyone surrender their phones?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Did I tell you anything about my briefcase?”
“You called afterward and complained that Naomi had changed the combination.”
Javier stopped moving the watch.
“What?”
“You said your assistant reset it because you forgot the number.”
“I didn’t forget it.”
“You told me you did.”
“When?”
“Saturday morning. You sounded hungover.”
“I had two drinks.”
“You sound hungover after one.”
“Why would Naomi change the combination?”
“How would I know?”
He searched his messages from June 15. Most of the thread with Inés concerned a leaking pipe in her kitchen. Then he found a line from himself: Naomi rescued the briefcase. Apparently I’ve become too old for three digits.
The memory returned imperfectly.
He had come down for breakfast and found the briefcase at the hotel concierge desk. Naomi said he had left it in the conference room after dinner. She had reset the lock because the latch jammed. At the time, he had been embarrassed enough to accept the explanation.
“Javier?” Inés said.
“I have to go.”
“You always say that before telling me anything.”
He ended the call and asked the investigators to bring Naomi in again.
She arrived the next afternoon with her own attorney.
Naomi Price had served as Javier’s executive assistant for six years. She knew which board members disliked early flights, which restaurants could seat Graham without a reservation, and how to move a meeting so that the offended party believed the change had been their idea. She sent flowers when employees lost parents and reminded Javier of birthdays he would otherwise miss.
She was forty-one, recently divorced, and supporting a son at a private college she could no longer afford.
Javier had known all of those facts separately. He had never placed them beside one another.
Naomi confirmed resetting the briefcase lock.
“Why?” the investigator asked.
“The latch wouldn’t open.”
“How did you know the combination?”
“Mr. Ortega gave it to me years ago.”
“Did you remove anything?”
“No.”
“Did anyone ask you to open the briefcase?”
Naomi looked at Javier, then at her attorney.
“Answer only what you remember,” the attorney said.
“Martin asked whether Javier’s authorization key was inside.”
“When?”
“At dinner.”
“Why?”
“He said treasury needed an urgent approval for a supplier payment.”
“Did you retrieve it?”
“No.”
“Did Martin?”
“I don’t know.”
The investigator placed hotel access records on the table. At 11:47 p.m., Naomi’s staff key had opened the conference room where the briefcase had been left.
“I went back for it,” she said.
“At Martin’s request?”
“No.”
“Who was with you?”
“No one.”
Security footage showed otherwise.
The hotel camera did not capture the room’s interior, but it showed Martin entering the corridor two minutes after Naomi and leaving twelve minutes later. Naomi emerged after him carrying Javier’s briefcase.
She pressed both hands beneath the table.
“Did he threaten you?” Javier asked.
Her attorney objected.
May you like
Naomi stared at him. “You don’t get to make this easier.”
The words struck him with their familiarity. Laura had said something similar without saying it at all.
