Part 12
“To the company?”
“To the police.”
Nora stopped.
“What did you tell them?”
“That Grant shoved you without justification.”
“I touched him first.”
“You put your hands against his chest after he pointed in your face.”
“That is still contact.”
“I told them everything.”
They resumed walking.
Traffic moved slowly along the avenue. A bus released a sigh of brakes at the corner.
Elise said, “Grant called me twelve times last night.”
“Did you answer?”
“The first three.”
“What did he say?”
“That you had planned the confrontation. That Julian was using you to remove him. That I needed to say you attacked him.”
“And?”
“I asked whether he had altered Saint Alder records.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked who had been talking to me.”
Nora looked at her.
“That was your answer?”
“Yes.”
They stopped near a small park where office workers ate late lunches from paper containers. A man in a Cubs cap scattered crumbs to pigeons beneath a sign asking people not to feed them.
Elise twisted a ring on her right hand.
“I moved out this morning.”
“Were you living with him?”
“Three years.”
“Where will you go?”
“My sister’s.”
Nora waited.
Elise seemed irritated by the silence.
“You think I stayed because of the money.”
“I don’t know why you stayed.”
“He was kind to me.”
“When?”
“At first. Then whenever I was almost ready to leave.”
The honesty of the sentence made Nora look away.
Elise continued. “He never hit me.”
“That is not the line between safe and unsafe.”
“I know that now.”
“You probably knew it before.”
Elise nodded.
“Yes.”
A pigeon flapped onto the bench beside them. The man in the Cubs cap told it, “You’re getting greedy,” as if the bird had violated a personal agreement.
Elise looked toward the station.
“Grant thinks you have something besides the drive.”
“I don’t.”
“He believes Paul copied a recording.”
“What recording?”
“I don’t know. He said Paul was always recording meetings because he didn’t trust his memory.”
Nora thought of the notebook, the password hints, the safe-deposit box.
“Did Beth mention audio files?”
“No.”
“The investigators may not have reached them.”
Elise touched Nora’s arm, then immediately withdrew her hand when she saw the bruise.
“Sorry.”
Nora said nothing.
Elise swallowed.
“There is something else.”
“Of course there is.”
“The night Miguel Sosa died, Grant came to my apartment.”
“You knew him then?”
“We had been dating for six months.”
“What time?”
“After midnight.”
“The collapse happened at four in the afternoon.”
“He said he had been with Julian and the lawyers.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know. He arrived without his phone.”
Nora looked at her sharply.
“He never went anywhere without it,” Elise said. “He said the battery died, but he had left the charger in my apartment the night before. Around two, he borrowed my laptop.”
“What did he do?”
“He logged into a remote desktop.”
“Did you see?”
“No. I was asleep.”
“Then how do you know?”
“My browser saved the remote-access address.”
“Do you still have the laptop?”
Elise nodded.
“Where?”
“My sister has it.”
“Do not turn it on.”
“I already did this morning.”
Nora closed her eyes.
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you connect it to the internet?”
“Yes.”
“Did you open the browser history?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Grant?”
“No.”
“Then shut it down and give it to the investigators exactly as it is.”
Elise’s face went pale.
“Can they recover what he did?”
“Maybe.”
“What if it shows nothing?”
“Then it shows nothing.”
“What if it shows he used my computer to alter the file?”
“Then you will have to explain why you waited four years.”
Elise looked at the pigeons.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“I’m not the person who decides what it costs you.”
“No. You’re only the person who had to pay first.”
That evening, Nora returned to the apartment after ten.
Daniel had ordered Thai food. The containers sat unopened on the counter, the rice clumped from cooling. He was on the floor beside a partially assembled bookshelf the landlord had delivered that afternoon.
“What are you doing?” Nora asked.
“Avoiding email.”
“You’re building it backward.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked at the instructions, then at the shelf, and laughed quietly.
“No.”
Nora changed into soft pants and one of his old shirts. When she returned, Daniel had disassembled the entire frame.
They ate from the containers at the counter.
Nora told him everything.
Not only about Saint Alder. She told him about her mother’s treatment, the settlement, the stolen laptop, Grant’s threat after Miguel’s funeral, the nights she had searched news archives for his widow and then closed the browser before making contact. She told him she had almost accepted another job in Chicago two years earlier and declined without mentioning it. She told him Paul’s note had arrived three weeks before Julian’s invitation and that she had used the invitation as cover to investigate.
Daniel listened without interrupting until she reached the end.
Then he said, “Is that everything?”
Nora looked at the untouched noodles in her container.
“No.”
He waited.
“Before Saint Alder, Grant and I were friends.”
Daniel’s expression changed only slightly.
“How close?”
“Close enough that I believed him when he said he would protect the project team.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“We kissed once.”
“When?”
“Two years before the collapse.”
“Were you together?”
“No.”
“Did he think you were?”
“Maybe.”
“Nora.”
“He proposed that we become something more. I said no.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw how he treated people when they disappointed him.”
Daniel leaned back.
“Did that affect what happened later?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he ever mention it?”
“After I raised the safety concern, he asked whether I was punishing him because he had moved on with Elise.”
Daniel looked toward the windows.
May you like
Nora continued. “I didn’t tell you because it made the professional retaliation sound personal, and I wanted the facts to stand without that.”
“Facts do not become weaker because people have histories.”
