Chương 7
She admitted receiving the Bellweather package.
Marcus had told her it contained an item their mother once owned and asked her to sign for it because he would be traveling. She delivered the unopened package to his office. She denied knowing Halcyon paid for it.
“Do you believe her?” Evelyn asked.
“I believe she expected us to believe her.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
“Did she know the purchase amount?”
“She says no.”
“Did she sign any Halcyon contracts?”
“Two board consent forms approving housing vendors.”
“Then Marcus has her name on the paperwork.”
“Yes.”
“He’s using her.”
“Possibly.”
Evelyn gave him a look.
Daniel set a grocery bag on the counter.
“Fine. Probably.”
Sophie sat at the table, working through a math packet. Daniel had brought chocolate cereal, oranges, and six yogurt cups. He had also brought a cream ribbon.
It was new, still wrapped around a cardboard card.
Sophie looked at it but did not touch it.
“I couldn’t find the original,” he said. “The hotel searched.”
“This one is too shiny.”
“I didn’t know ribbons had levels of shine.”
“They do.”
“I’ll return it.”
“You can leave it.”
He placed it beside her pencil case.
Evelyn waited until Sophie went to the bedroom before asking, “Why are you here?”
Daniel leaned against the counter.
“Anika Reyes used the emergency contact protocol this morning.”
Evelyn’s attention sharpened.
“What did she send?”
“One word. Harbor.”
Months earlier, Evelyn and Anika had agreed on a series of ordinary words with specific meanings. Harbor meant immediate danger but no safe channel for explanation.
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know. She left the foundation office at eleven twelve yesterday. Her phone remained in her desk.”
“Home?”
“Empty.”
“Family?”
“A brother in Milwaukee says he hasn’t heard from her.”
“Marcus?”
“His public schedule puts him at his attorney’s office and then his home.”
“Public schedule.”
“Yes.”
“Did she access the foundation system before leaving?”
“Her credentials downloaded payroll files and vendor invoices. The activity was flagged, but we don’t know whether it was her.”
“She may be trying to preserve evidence.”
“Or someone is making it look like she took it.”
Evelyn thought of the note beneath her building door.
“Marcus is building a thief.”
Daniel nodded.
If Anika surfaced with records, Marcus could accuse her of stealing data and money. If she disappeared, he could imply she fled after embezzlement. The foundation’s internal controls placed her close enough to every transaction to make either story plausible.
“Let me help find her.”
“You are still on administrative status.”
“She chose the word with me.”
“We have the protocol.”
“You have the meaning. You don’t know why she chose it.”
“Do you?”
Evelyn walked to the window. The secure apartment overlooked a parking garage and the blank side of another building.
Anika had resisted the word harbor when they created the list.
It sounds safe, she had said.
That’s why it works, Evelyn replied.
No. Safe places are where people look first.
Anika had stared at the list, then tapped the word.
My father used to take us to a harbor when my mother got sick. Not a real harbor. A restaurant. Harbor House. It smelled like fried fish and bleach.
“Her father took her to a restaurant called Harbor House,” Evelyn said. “When she was a child.”
Daniel was already reaching for his phone.
“Where?”
“She grew up near Milwaukee. I don’t know whether it still exists.”
Within minutes, an analyst found three former restaurants with that name. Two had closed decades earlier. The third was now a family diner near Racine, Wisconsin, still using the old Harbor House sign above the rear entrance.
Agents located Anika there at four in the afternoon.
She sat in a corner booth with a duffel bag beneath the table and a cup of coffee gone cold. She had not been abducted. No one had physically followed her. She had driven north after finding an unsigned termination agreement on her office printer and a draft police report on a shared legal server accusing her of transferring foundation money to an account in Mexico.
The account existed.
It had been opened using a copy of her passport.
Anika had never seen it before.
Agents brought her to a field office outside Chicago. She refused to speak until Evelyn joined the interview.
The prosecutor objected. Review counsel objected. Daniel argued that Anika had invoked the emergency protocol specifically tied to Evelyn and might not cooperate otherwise.
Permission came with conditions. Evelyn could attend as a witness contact, not a case agent. She could not lead the interview. Every word would be recorded.
Sophie stayed with Daniel’s wife, Mina, a pediatric dentist who owned three card games and did not ask questions.
At the field office, Evelyn entered the interview room wearing plain black trousers and a gray sweater. Her badge and weapon remained locked outside.
Anika sat with both hands wrapped around a paper cup. She was forty-one, with dark curls pulled into a careless knot and the exhausted stillness of someone who had spent too long expecting a door to open.
When she saw Evelyn, her face changed.
Not relief. Anger.
“You brought a child there.”
Evelyn took the chair across from her.
“Yes.”
“I saw the video.”
“I know.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That she would be separated from the operation.”
“You told me they protect people.”
“They try.”
Anika laughed once, without humor.
“Is that what you came to say?”
“No.”
The prosecutor, Miriam Vale, sat at the end of the table with a legal pad. She had a narrow face, close-cropped silver hair, and a habit of waiting long enough that other people mistook silence for permission to keep talking.
“Ms. Reyes,” Miriam said, “we need to understand why you withdrew cooperation.”
Anika looked at Evelyn.
“You told them?”
“I told them you used the emergency word.”
“No. About my sister.”
May you like
Evelyn had not.
Anika’s younger sister lived in Mexico City and had recently applied for a visa to work in the United States. Marcus knew this because the foundation’s human resources department collected family information for employee travel benefits.
