Marshall sat with his back to the wall, posture relaxed enough to pass as bored, hands wrapped around a ceramic cup like he needed the heat. He’d chosen a two-top near the back. Good sight lines. A clean escape to the side exit. She hated that she’d noticed the exits. She hated that she’d texted him at all.
Norah: Can we meet?
The reply had come back too fast to be anything but already-waiting.
Marshall: When and where?
Norah: Atlas & Ash. Whenever you’re free.
His reply again, far too quick.
Marshall: Fifteen minutes.
After they’d spoken on the sidewalk the other day, Norah had been adamant that she wasn’t going to listen to anythingMarshall had to say. Richard hadn’t even flinched when she spoke to him about her concerns. But he had dismissed them. Sort of.
Of course, even with the numbers in the file smoothed out, Norah knew that there would be more traces of fraud. They were just harder to uncover.
So she’d kept digging. And the more she looked, the murkier the water was. And for some reason, instead of going back to Hale like she should have? She’d texted Marshall.
And he’d come. In a navy suit, as though he was wearing corporate camouflage. The disguise almost worked. But the collar bent away from his neck, like he’d been tugging at it. No tie this time, unlike his day posing as Mr. Kincaid. The circles under his eyes said sleep hadn’t been a priority the last few nights.
She stopped at the table. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course.” He stood and waited until she sat before he did. Another reminder that he’d been raised in the same small town rural West Virginia areas as she had, where manners were still drilled into young men.
The server arrived immediately. “What can I get for you?”
“Americano, please.” Norah said.
“Another drip,” Marshall added, without looking away from her.
They waited while the server set two cups and a water carafe with the precise fussiness Atlas & Ash was famous for. Norah wrapped her fingers around the glass and focused on the condensation. Her pulse knocked against the base of her throat.
“I probably shouldn’t have texted,” she said, before she could talk herself into polite small talk.
“You should have,” he said. Calm. “And you did. So here we are.”
“I’m not here because I’m scared,” she added, too fast.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you thought it.” She could hear her own defensiveness, but she couldn’t stop it from coloring every word.
He took the hit without flinching. “Believe it or not, you can’t read my mind.”
Silence stretched, thin as wire. She looked past him to the window where rain drew rivulets through her reflection. The Americano arrived; the server left. A man in a slate suit took the table behind them, opened a laptop, and started a video call at a volume that suggested he’d never considered he wasn’t the main character.
Norah leaned in. “The ledgers where I found the initial problems were...corrected. But I keep finding more breadcrumbs. Real estate mostly.”
“What about it?”
She waved a hand. “Several properties that shouldn’t be worth anything being valued like they’re gold-plated. Money moving through them like clockwork. Have you ever heard of?—”
His eyes flicked up. “No names. Not here.”
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “There are shell companies attached to other shell companies,” she said quietly. “Some of them lead nowhere. Some loop back on themselves. But the money keeps flowing through them.”
He leaned back, absorbing the code beneath her words. “Timing?”
