Chương 7
“Yes.”
“When?”
“April.”
He stood.
The lead investigator, a woman named Dana Feld, said, “Mr. Mercer, I need you not to participate if you’re going to react to every answer.”
“This is the first I’ve heard that my daughter accessed confidential records under my name.”
“That is why we are asking.”
Leah crossed her arms.
“Sit down, Dad.”
Malcolm looked at her.
Then at Dana.
Then he sat.
Dana returned to Leah.
“What did you access?”
“Vendor approvals, internal legal reviews, and payment summaries.”
“Did you alter anything?”
“No.”
“Download?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Hundreds of files.”
“Where are they?”
Leah looked at Malcolm.
“Not with him.”
Dana noticed.
“Why not?”
“Because if the inside person is close enough to access executive material, I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“Do you trust your father?”
Leah considered it.
Malcolm’s face tightened.
She said, “With my life.”
Dana waited.
Leah added, “Not always with my choices.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Malcolm stared at the floor.
Dana continued the interview.
The distinction stayed in the room long after she left.
That evening, Malcolm cooked pasta in Nina’s kitchen because Nina had a late appointment and Leah was supposed to avoid staring at screens all night.
He was bad at it.
Leah sat at the small table watching him misuse a colander.
“You own restaurants.”
“I don’t operate them.”
“Clearly.”
“Your mother did the cooking.”
“I know.”
“She hated my pasta.”
“I know that too.”
He drained the pot.
Half the noodles slid into the sink.
Leah laughed.
Malcolm stared at them.
“I’m ordering something.”
“No. Five-second rule.”
“They’re in a sink.”
“Then maybe not.”
He threw the ruined noodles away and started over.
Leah watched him fill the pot again.
“You didn’t answer the investigator.”
“About what?”
“Whether you were angry that I used your login.”
“I am.”
“You’re being weirdly civilized about it.”
“I was instructed to stop reacting to every answer.”
“By a woman you pay.”
“I’m still capable of learning.”
Leah smiled.
Then her expression faded.
“I should have told you sooner.”
“Yes.”
She looked at him.
He put up one hand.
“I’m not done.”
She waited.
“I also gave you reasons not to.”
Her eyes dropped to the table.
Malcolm stirred the water even though it had not begun boiling.
“I thought providing things was the same as being available.”
Leah said nothing.
“I paid for schools. Apartments. Whatever you needed.”
“You did.”
“And when you came to me with problems, I fixed them.”
“You tried.”
“I didn’t notice that eventually you stopped bringing me problems.”
The water began to bubble.
Leah rubbed at a scratch in the table.
“You made needing help feel expensive.”
Malcolm turned off the burner by mistake.
He stared at the stove.
Leah almost laughed.
Instead she stood and corrected it.
Neither of them mentioned that she had answered him.
The investigators found the first clean link six days later.
Briar House Consulting, North Meridian, and three other vendors had routed portions of Mercer payments into accounts connected through a common administrative service. That service had once represented a small investment vehicle partly controlled by Grant’s firm.
It did not prove Grant had stolen anything.
It did prove his claim that he had no connection to the vendors was false.
Then the hotel footage arrived.
Malcolm watched it with outside counsel.
He saw himself enter the top-floor corridor with Owen.
He saw Grant step through the suite doorway.
He saw Leah on the floor.
He saw Grant move toward her.
He saw his own kick.
There was no audio.
The angle was distant but clear enough that Grant’s version of an unprovoked attack was difficult to sustain.
It also showed something else.
At 10:23:41, seconds before Malcolm reached the corridor, a second man stepped from the suite into the service vestibule.
Only his back was visible.
Dark suit.
Gray hair.
Average height.
He paused beside the service door.
Then Leah called something from inside the suite.
The man turned his head.
Not enough for a face.
Enough for Malcolm to notice the left shoulder.
Lower than the right.
Victor had broken his collarbone skiing fifteen years earlier. The shoulder had healed imperfectly. Tailors compensated for it.
Malcolm replayed the footage.
Owen stood beside him.
“Could be anyone,” Owen said.
“Yes.”
“You’re thinking Victor.”
“Yes.”
“Because of the shoulder.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I know.”
Malcolm replayed it again.
Owen said, “Stop.”
Malcolm looked at him.
“You’re going to turn resemblance into certainty.”
Malcolm leaned back.
“I hate it when you sound like Leah.”
“You pay me to prevent expensive mistakes.”
“I thought I paid you to prevent people from shooting me.”
“That too.”
Malcolm closed the laptop.
He did not call Victor.
That may have been the hardest useful thing he had done all week.
Leah received a letter from Grant’s attorney the next morning.
Not an email.
A letter.
It proposed a confidential separation agreement.
Grant would withdraw his assault complaint against Malcolm, cease public discussion of Leah’s medical condition, and agree to an uncontested divorce process.
In return, Leah would state that she had independently approved the Mercer vendor payments and had never been pressured by Grant to sign them.
Nina read the page twice.
“This is blackmail.”
Leah stared at it.
“Probably don’t use legal words you got from television.”
“I watch excellent television.”
Leah reached for her coffee.
Her hand shook.
Nina noticed and pretended not to.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“You want to tell him to go to hell.”
“That isn’t the same as knowing what to do.”
Nina sat across from her.
Leah looked at the letter again.
The offer was ugly.
It was also tempting.
That was the part she did not want to admit.
If she signed, Grant might leave her alone.
Her father’s assault accusation might disappear.
May you like
The newspapers would move on.
The board might accept that Leah had made poor decisions but not that the company had been infiltrated from within.
