Chương 2
“He worked for me for nine years.”
“And today he is a witness in my courtroom.”
Julian leaned back. His hands disappeared beneath the table.
Judge Sloan called a recess and ordered the digital material secured by the court pending review. She directed the clerk to contact the appropriate investigative authorities without making any finding about the truth of the allegations. She warned both parties not to destroy, alter, transfer, conceal, or communicate about potential evidence. When Cole requested that the divorce hearing continue as scheduled, the judge looked at him for several seconds before saying, “It will not.”
Outside, the courthouse corridor had already changed.
Reporters who had come for a wealthy divorce now stood with their phones lifted. Court staff whispered near the elevator. A woman Elisa did not recognize stared at her shoulders until Mae took off her own charcoal jacket and placed it around Elisa without comment.
The photographer from inside the courtroom approached carefully.
“Ms. Vance,” he said. “I didn’t take the photograph.”
Elisa looked at him.
He was younger than she had thought, perhaps thirty. A press credential identified him as Luis Romero. He held his camera against his chest.
“You could have,” she said.
“I know.”
“Someone else will describe it.”
“I know that too.”
The elevator doors opened, and the waiting reporters surged forward. Mae stepped between them and Elisa. Questions broke over one another.
“Did your husband cause those injuries?”
“Are federal investigators involved?”
“Was the company used to hide marital assets?”
“Ms. Vance, did you authorize the transfers?”
“Is Nora Hale implicated?”
At Nora’s name, Elisa glanced back.
Nora stood near the courtroom doors with one hand pressed to her throat. Julian was nowhere beside her. Cole had drawn him into a conference room, while another lawyer hurried in from the stairwell.
Nora met Elisa’s eyes.
For one second, something passed between them that was neither sympathy nor hatred. It was recognition stripped of intimacy. Nora had thought she knew the man she had chosen. Elisa had once thought the same.
Mae guided Elisa into the elevator.
Only when the doors closed did Elisa notice that her blouse was buttoned wrong.
The left side hung an inch lower than the right. She tried to fix it, then stopped. Her hands were shaking too badly.
Mae pressed the button for the garage. “There’s a car waiting.”
“I don’t want a car.”
“You don’t want the sidewalk.”
“I want coffee.”
Mae gave her a sideways look. “Coffee.”
“Bad coffee. From the cart near the park.”
“There are twenty cameras outside.”
“I know.”
“Elisa.”
“I stood half-dressed in a courtroom.”
“That does not mean you have to spend the rest of the morning proving you can survive sidewalks.”
The elevator reached the garage.
Elisa stared at the seam between the doors. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next.”
Mae’s expression softened, though her voice did not. “Get in the car. That’s next.”
The waiting sedan carried them to Mae’s office on Madison Avenue. Elisa sat in the rear seat with Mae’s jacket around her and watched pedestrians cross against the light. A man in a delivery vest balanced two coffees while arguing through an earpiece. A woman dragged a reluctant terrier away from a hot-dog cart. Nobody outside the tinted windows knew that Elisa’s marriage had stopped being private twenty minutes earlier.
Her phone vibrated continuously.
Mae held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
Elisa turned the screen facedown.
“You don’t have to read any of it.”
“I’m not reading.”
“You’re watching it arrive.”
“That’s different.”
“It isn’t.”
Elisa handed over the phone.
Mae switched it off.
At the office, two associates were waiting in the conference room with bottled water, legal pads, and the strained politeness of people who had seen something intimate and were determined not to show it. Marcus sat at the far end of the table beside his lawyer.
He stood when Elisa entered.
She wished he had not.
“You came,” she said.
“I said I would.”
“You said a lot of things.”
Marcus looked at Mae’s jacket around her shoulders. “I know.”
His lawyer, a compact woman named Daria Wells, motioned for him to sit. “Before anyone discusses substance, we need clarity on the court’s preservation order and on what Mr. Reed may be asked by investigators.”
Mae took the seat across from her. “The drive is secured. My copy is encrypted and unopened beyond the index.”
“You reviewed portions.”
“Metadata and a sample sufficient to seek emergency relief.”
Daria nodded once. “Marcus may have exposure.”
Elisa laughed.
It came out too sharply. Everyone looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was—”
“No,” Marcus said. “It’s fair.”
She removed Mae’s jacket and placed it carefully over the chair beside her. The blouse covered most of the scars again. Only a thin raised line showed near her wrist.
“You may have exposure,” she repeated.
“I did things for him.”
“You watched things happen.”
“Yes.”
“You stood outside doors.”
“Yes.”
“You changed the security logs.”
Marcus’s eyes dropped. “Yes.”
The room’s ventilation system clicked on. Papers stirred near one of the associates.
Elisa had imagined this conversation many times, but in none of those versions had Marcus looked ordinary. In memory he was always broad-shouldered and impassive, standing at the entrance to Julian’s study while Elisa tried to decide whether asking for help would make things worse. Now he had a stain on his tie and a deep crease across one cuff.
“Why now?” she asked.
He looked at Daria.
She said, “Answer if you can answer truthfully.”
“I saw the divorce filings,” Marcus said. “The claim that you abandoned the company. The affidavits about your instability. I knew what he was doing.”
“You knew before.”
“Yes.”
“He was doing it before.”
“Yes.”
“Then why now?”
Marcus pressed his palms together. “Because I was afraid.”
“So was I.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
May you like
He accepted that without argument.
Elisa walked to the window. Below, yellow cabs moved through the intersection. A cyclist slapped the hood of a car that had drifted into the bike lane. The driver shouted something she could not hear.
