Chapter 8: Before He Moves First
I called Julian from the car.
"Mateo has someone watching your building," I said.
"Selina told me."
"I know," he said.
"We made him two days ago.
We've been feeding him nothing useful since then."
"You knew and didn't tell me?"
"I didn't want you changing your behavior," he said.
"If you'd known, you would have looked for him.
He would have noticed."
I wanted to be angry about that.
I filed it away for later.
"Selina gave me a drive," I said.
"Mateo's private server communications.
She copied them before the party."
A pause.
Longer than his pauses usually were.
"Bring it directly here," he said.
"Don't stop anywhere first."
Elena was already in the conference room when I arrived.
Julian's IT director, a quiet man named Prescott, had a laptop open on the table.
I handed him the drive.
He plugged it in without a word and began working.
"How much is here?" Elena asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"Selina said everything relevant."
Prescott looked up after four minutes.
"Forty-three message threads.
Twelve voice memos.
Six document files." He paused.
"And one video file.
Forty-seven minutes long.
Recorded fourteen months ago."
"Play the video," Julian said.
It was a boardroom.
Not the Vance Group's main offices — somewhere smaller, more private.
Richard Vance sat at the head of the table.
Mateo was to his right.
Three other men were present, two of whom Elena identified immediately: a senior project director at the Illinois Department of Transportation, and a man named Garrett Foss, who ran the primary shell company that routed the falsified bids.
The conversation on the video was specific, detailed, and recorded with the camera positioned behind a ventilation panel.
Selina had been in that room.
For forty-seven minutes, Richard Vance walked his team through the next phase of the bid structure.
He named contracts.
He named amounts.
He named the government contacts who would smooth the process.
He named Commissioner Whitfield twice by first name and laughed when Garrett Foss asked if Whitfield was getting nervous.
"Dale has been nervous for six years," Richard said on the video.
"Nervous men don't talk.
They just cash the checks."
When the video ended, the conference room was completely silent.
Elena's eyes were bright.
Not with tears — with the specific expression of someone who has waited a very long time for a door to open.
"That's it," she said quietly.
"That's everything we needed."
Julian looked at me.
"This goes to the U.S.
Attorney's office.
Today.
Not tomorrow."
"Agreed," I said.
"But before it does — Mateo threatened Selina last night.
He said he had texts he could use against her.
We need to move fast enough that he can't act on that."
"I'll call Grace Okafor," Julian said.
Grace was the attorney who had represented Elena three years ago and had been waiting, Elena had told me, for exactly this moment.
"She can have an emergency protective filing ready within the hour."
He was already reaching for his phone when mine rang.
Mateo's name on the screen.
Everyone in the room went still.
I looked at Julian.
He gave a single nod.
I answered and put it on speaker.
"Daniela," Mateo said.
His voice was pleasant.
Controlled.
The voice he used when he wanted something.
"I think it's time we had a real conversation.
Just the two of us.
Tonight."
"About what?" I said.
"About how far you actually want to take this," he said.
"Because I promise you — and I say this with genuine concern for your family — you do not want to find out what happens if Sterling keeps pulling on this particular thread."
"Is that a threat, Mateo?"
"It's a courtesy," he said.
"One I won't extend twice."
I looked at the laptop screen.
At the frozen final frame of a forty-seven-minute video that had been sitting on a private server for fourteen months.
"I appreciate the call," I said.
"I really do."
And I ended it.
Julian was already talking to Grace.
Elena was making her own call.
Prescott was making three encrypted copies of the drive's contents.
May you like
Mateo had called to warn me off.
He had called twenty minutes too late.
