Chapter 4: What She Didn't Put in the Folder
I stayed at the Grandview Plaza for another hour after Jason left.
Walter insisted on it.
He walked me through the room slowly, introducing me to department heads and senior staff who had spent eighteen months watching their company bleed and not knowing why.
A woman named Patricia, who ran Meridian's accounts payable team, shook my hand with both of hers and said simply, "Thank you for not letting it go under." She looked like she hadn't slept well in months.
I told her the accounts payable team was the reason we'd been able to trace anything at all.
Her records were meticulous.
She blinked twice.
"Nobody's ever said that to me before."
"They should have," I said.
By ten o'clock the ballroom had thinned.
I found a quiet corner near the bar and called Dr.
Reyes, who had left an hour earlier.
"Tell me about the second account," I said.
"I was waiting for your call." I heard her set something down on a desk.
"The fourteen vendor payments we showed Jason tonight total two point three million.
That's what's in the folder."
"And the second account?"
"Separate structure entirely.
Routed through a different shell — this one registered in Nevada, not Delaware.
Smaller payments.
More frequent.
Going back thirty-one months."
Thirty-one months.
Jason and I had been married for six years.
Thirty-one months ago, we were still living in the house on Lakeview Drive.
He was still bringing me coffee on Sunday mornings.
"How much?" I asked.
"Best current estimate is four point one million."
I set my glass down on the bar.
"Carol," I said.
"The Nevada company.
Who's the registered agent?"
A pause.
"That's the part I held back tonight," she said.
"The registered agent is a man named Gerald Fitch.
He's a retired accountant.
He's also Jason's uncle."
I had met Gerald Fitch exactly once, at a family dinner four years ago.
He had been quiet, unremarkable.
He'd spent most of the evening talking about fishing.
"Does Jason know we have this?" I asked.
"No.
Phillip and I agreed to keep it out of the folder until we knew whether Jason would cooperate or lawyer up immediately."
"He lawyered up immediately."
"I know.
I expected that." Another pause.
"Helena, there's one more thing."
"Tell me."
"The Nevada account received its last deposit eleven days ago.
After the acquisition documents were already filed.
After Jason would have known that Vanguard was moving in."
I understood what she was saying.
Someone had told him.
Someone inside the process had warned Jason that the acquisition was coming, and he had moved money anyway — or someone had moved it for him.
"I need the full transfer records for the Nevada account on my desk by tomorrow morning," I said.
"Already printing."
I ended the call and stood for a moment with my hand resting on the bar.
Across the room, Walter was saying goodnight to the last of the department heads.
He caught my eye and walked over.
"You look like you found something," he said.
"I found something I wasn't expecting."
"Worse than the folder?"
"Significantly."
Walter was quiet for a moment.
He had built Meridian Dynamics from a twelve-person consulting firm into a company with eight hundred employees over twenty years.
He was sixty-three years old and he did not panic easily.
"Is it contained to Jason?" he asked.
"I don't know yet."
"But you think it isn't."
"I think someone warned him," I said.
"After the filing.
Which means someone with access to the acquisition process was feeding him information."
Walter's expression didn't change.
But his hand, resting on the bar beside mine, went very still.
"I'll need the full list of everyone who had access to the filing documents," I said.
"I'll have it to you by eight a.m."
"Thank you, Walter."
He nodded once.
Then he said, "Helena.
I've known Jason for nine years.
I recommended him for the strategy officer position myself.
If he was doing this—"
"He was doing this."
"Then I owe you more than an apology."
"You owe me nothing," I said.
"You brought me in when it mattered.
That's enough."
I collected my coat from the cloakroom and walked out through the hotel's main entrance into the cold night air.
My driver was waiting.
I sat in the back seat and opened my phone.
There were eleven missed calls — three from Jason's personal number, one from a number I didn't recognize, and one from my attorney, Grace Holloway, timestamped forty minutes ago.
I called Grace back.
She answered on the first ring.
"Jason's attorney contacted me twenty minutes ago," she said.
"He's asking whether you're willing to discuss a private settlement before this goes any further."
"Tonight?"
"Apparently Jason is very motivated."
I looked out the window at the city moving past.
"Tell Marcus Reeves," I said, "that I'll be in touch when I'm ready.
And not before."
Grace was quiet for a beat.
"There's something else.
Reeves mentioned that Jason has documentation he believes is relevant to the acquisition process.
He's suggesting it could complicate your majority position."
My hand tightened slightly around the phone.
"What kind of documentation?"
"He didn't say.
He just said Jason wants you to know he isn't coming to this empty-handed."
I stared at the passing streetlights.
Jason had been in that ballroom for twenty minutes after the announcement.
Twenty minutes where he had stood in front of two hundred witnesses looking like a man who had lost everything.
But he had walked out making threats.
May you like
Which meant he had something.
Or he believed he did.
