Part 3
Claire looked at the dark phone for a moment longer. Then she asked Grant to put it somewhere she would not hear it.
He did. That small obedience helped her more than another assurance would have.
She slept through most of the evening. Before she went to bed properly, Grant asked whether he could hang the clothes in her suitcase so they would not crease. She was too tired to do it herself and nodded from the sofa.
When she woke the next morning, she lay still, waiting for the familiar discomfort of remembering what kind of day she was about to have.
A radiator ticked near the window. No doors shut. Nobody spoke sharply into a phone.
She put her hand on her stomach.
“You and me,” she whispered. “We’re going to manage.”
In the kitchen, sliced pears and toast waited under a clean towel. Grant had left a note asking her to eat before worrying about anything else. Her vitamins stood beside a full glass of water.
She took one and cried while she chewed the first piece of toast. She had become so accustomed to looking after herself without being noticed that breakfast laid out by somebody else felt almost difficult to accept.
Later, she opened her laptop at the table. Work files filled the screen, familiar names from a life that had not entirely disappeared. She had brought a backup copied from the shared computer at home along with her own files, afraid that she might lose access to old drawings if she left without them.
A knock made her flinch.
Grant stood outside with a flat portfolio under one arm. His shirtsleeves were rolled back, and he was carrying two coffees, one decaffeinated.
“I thought we might look at these,” he said.
Inside the portfolio were prints of her own drawings.
Claire recognized the first one before he laid it down: a public lounge organized around a curved reading area, with daylight reaching deep into the room. She had drawn it two years earlier while considering an advanced interiors program.
Adrian had told her the tuition made no sense. He had called the work a pleasant diversion, then asked why she needed another qualification when she already had a job.
“How do you have these?”
“You sent me a set after that fundraiser. I asked because I wanted to see the rest.”
“I assumed you were being polite.”
“I was interested in the work.” Grant spread another drawing beside the first. “I still am.”
She studied the lines, remembering the woman who had stayed up late making them. She had forgotten how much confidence had lived in those early sketches.
“Harborline Residences is nearing its final interior phase,” Grant said. “The main construction is already done. The common spaces need a better hand than they’ve had so far, and I’d like to bring you in as a consultant.”
Claire stared at him.
“It’s a contract,” he added. “A fee, a schedule, a defined scope. Calder & Pierce is one of the financial partners, but you’d work through the Hollis firm.”
“I’m pregnant. I’ve just left my husband. I’m not exactly dependable right now.”
“You’re a designer dealing with difficult circumstances. Those aren’t the same thing.”
He slid the portfolio toward her rather than pressing it into her hands.
“Read the proposal when you feel able. If the workload isn’t right, we adjust it. If you don’t want it, you say no.”
She looked down at the curved reading area again. Adrian had persuaded her that wanting more was selfish. Grant was sitting across from her discussing fees and deliverables as if her abilities were an ordinary fact.
“I’d want to see the existing plans first,” she said.
“Of course.”
“And the materials budget.”
Grant’s smile was brief but unmistakable. “I hoped you’d ask.”
They spent half an hour looking through drawings. When she offered to find the original renderings on her laptop, she opened the backup folder and discovered corporate scans mixed among the household files Adrian had left on the shared computer.
She could not tell what most of them meant. Grant recognized enough to stop the conversation about design.
He did not forward anything without asking. He explained that compliance staff should determine whether the files mattered, and Claire gave permission for the relevant records to be preserved. She had not set out to uncover anything. She simply would not destroy something because Adrian might prefer it gone.
Afterward, she returned to the project plans. For the first time since leaving, she could picture an income, a desk, work that belonged to her.
Across town, Adrian was finding out how little of his own work remained under his control.
The employees nearest his office stopped talking when he stepped off the elevator at Calder & Pierce. He usually enjoyed the attention his arrival produced. That morning he could not tell whether people were looking at him or carefully looking away.
He shut his office door and locked it.
A cabinet stood several inches from the wall. The stack of folders on his desk had been disturbed. Most alarming of all, the narrow drawer beneath the return was open.
He reached it in three steps.
The external drive was gone.
It held five years of private records: original figures beside the altered reports, account trails he had kept to reconcile his own arrangements, documents that made sense only when viewed together. He had believed the lock made it safe.
He emptied the drawer onto the carpet. Then he opened the one below it and began pulling out papers, though he knew perfectly well where the drive had been.
A framed photograph slid off the desk and struck the floor. Glass cracked across Claire’s face. He barely looked at it.
He had let Vanessa into this office after hours. She knew which drawer he used. But panic steered him toward the person he already wanted to blame.
Grant had the reach. Grant had helped Claire. Grant could have persuaded somebody with access to take what he needed.
The desk phone rang.
“Mr. Voss, this is Paul Mercer from the compliance office. The board needs you in the west conference room.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Send me the agenda.”
A pause followed. “The chairman is waiting.”
Adrian looked at the open drawer. He considered not going, then realized there was nowhere in the building he could go instead.
He took off his coat, straightened his tie, and checked his face in the dark glass of the bookcase. There was color in his cheeks that he did not like.
In the corridor, an assistant stepped back to let him pass. She did not offer the smile she usually did.
The board had assembled around a table with no coffee cups on it. Alton Price, the board chair, sat at the head, a thick folder in front of him. A lawyer occupied a chair near the wall.
“Close the door, Adrian,” Price said.
Adrian stayed standing. “If this is about the rumors circulating downstairs, I’d prefer we begin by establishing where they came from.”
“We’ll begin with the records.” Price indicated the empty chair. “Sit down.”
Adrian sat.
The first page placed in front of him bore his signature. He recognized the transfer before he read the amount. It was followed by a report showing a figure he had changed, and then a payment described as a bonus that no authorized committee had approved.
He pushed the papers back an inch.
“Documents can be manufactured.”
A board member opened her laptop. “These correspond with records we hold internally. Our compliance team has already verified several of the transactions.”
“Verified them how?”
“Enough to establish that we cannot leave you in control of the accounts,” Price said.
Adrian looked around the table. Nobody interrupted on his behalf.
“The first packet arrived yesterday,” Price continued. “Further material has followed. The company has also heard from federal investigators.”
“The FBI?”
“Yes.”
Adrian put both feet flat on the floor, trying to keep his knee from moving.
A man near the end of the table spoke without raising his voice. “The potential issues include fraud, tax violations, and diversion of company funds. Depending on what prosecutors establish, the exposure could be measured in decades.”
“I need my attorney.”
“You should call one,” the lawyer by the wall said. “We’re not requiring you to answer further questions now.”
Price closed the folder.
“We are placing you on leave for the duration of the inquiry. Your permissions have been withdrawn, so don’t attempt to use company systems. Wait for security before returning to your office; they’ll stay with you while you take personal items out.”
Adrian looked toward the door as two security employees entered. They were men he had nodded to for years without learning anything about them.
One waited beside his chair.
Adrian rose slowly. He wanted to tell Price that the company needed him, that transactions were in progress, that people outside this room would be alarmed by such a decision. But the board members were already gathering their papers, relieved to have taken the step.
He walked out between the guards.
That night, Claire lay awake in the Lincoln Square apartment. Grant had stayed in the guest room again after she asked him to. Knowing he was nearby helped, but exhaustion did not keep her thoughts quiet.
Every time she drifted toward sleep, she heard some version of Adrian telling her she was being unreasonable. She had spent so long preparing answers for him that her mind continued doing it in his absence.
A little before three, discomfort low in her belly became sharp enough to make her sit up.
She waited, one hand spread over the place that hurt.
Another tightening came. She tried to breathe through it, then reached for her phone. It slipped from the bedside table and struck the floor beyond her reach.
“No,” she whispered. “Please.”
She lowered one foot to the rug, then the other. Standing made her light-headed. She steadied herself against the dresser and called Grant’s name, too softly at first.
By the time she reached the doorway, she could not hide the fear in her voice.
“Grant. I need help.”
His door opened at once. He crossed the hall and put an arm around her before her knees folded.
“Tell me where it hurts.”
She pressed her hand below her stomach. “Here. It keeps coming back.”
He reached for his phone, called ahead for urgent help, and carried her to the elevator while she held on to the front of his shirt.
In the garage, he settled her into the passenger seat and fastened the belt low across her hips. The hospital was close enough for the streets to feel unbearably long.
“Talk to me,” he said as he drove. “Tell me when it eases.”
Claire watched the signals change ahead of them. At a red light, he took her hand for a moment.
“I can’t lose him,” she said.
“We’re getting you to people who can help. I’m staying with you.”
At Northwestern Memorial, staff met them at the entrance. Grant gave the information Claire could not manage, walking beside the chair until a nurse needed room to work.
Claire reached back once. His fingers met hers, then the chair carried her through the doors and a nurse stepped between them…
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