Chapter Four
The Boston Arts Alliance held their spring fundraiser in a converted warehouse south of the Financial District—exposed brick, industrial lighting, concrete floors softened by rented rugs and clusters of mid-century furniture arranged to look casual but which cost a fortune. The crowd was smaller than the gala. Younger, louder, less polished. No string quartet. A DJ in the corner played something low and electronic that nobody was dancing to yet.
Fallon liked this kind of event better. Black-tie crowds moved in predictable patterns—bar, auction…bar, conversation cluster…bar. These rooms were looser. People wandered. Groups formed and dissolved. It was easier to drift through without anyone noticing she’d been drifting.
She’d dressed for it. A simple black dress, fitted but not tight, hem just above the knee, pockets hidden in the side seams. Heels low enough to move in. Her hair was up in a twist she’d pinned tight against the back of her head, and her makeup was different from the gala—stronger brows, darker lip, the kind of subtle reshaping that changed the geometry of her face just enough that no one would get any sort of “have we met before?” feelings.
That was the point. That was always the point. To get in and out undetected.
Malcolm Prescott was standing near the bar with two other men. He was shorter than she’d expected from Cassandra’s photos. Slim build, silver hair swept back from a high forehead, a navy blazer over an open-collared shirt. He looked like an advertisement for wealth management: tanned, groomed, relaxed in the way only people who’d never been toldnocould be.
Fallon circulated, keeping him in her line of vision. She moved through three conversations in twenty minutes, none of them memorable, all of them useful. She learned where the restrooms were, which hallways led to private offices, and where the catering staff staged between courses.
She noted two security cameras—one on the main entrance, one covering the silent auction tables—and a service door propped open with a rubber wedge that nobody seemed concerned about.
She also learned that Prescott’s blazer had an interior breast pocket, and that he kept his phone in his right trouser pocket, and that when he laughed he tilted his head back and to the left, exposing the lapel.
At nine-fifteen, she made her move.
The bar was three deep. Prescott was on his second drink—bourbon, neat—and holding court with a man she recognized from Cassandra’s research as a board member of the Harbor Light Foundation. Their conversation was loud enough to catch pieces of. Something about a property on the Cape. Something about a boat.
Fallon slid into the gap beside Prescott with a glass of white wine she had no intention of drinking. She angled her body toward the bar, waited for him to shift his weight, and timed her move to his next laugh. She stepped into his space just enoughto bump his arm with her shoulder—loss of balance, the crowd pressing in, an accident that wasn’t one—and caught herself with her free hand against his chest.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Quick, embarrassed, already pulling away.
Her palm had been on his lapel for less than a second. The adhesive-backed transmitter was already in place on the underside of the fabric. Smaller than a shirt button. Skin-colored.
Prescott glanced down at her. “No worries.”
She gave him an apologetic half-smile and turned away before he could say anything else. Staying meant conversation. Conversation meant being remembered. She moved through the gap at the bar and was gone before his attention had fully registered her face.
She found a spot near the windows where she could stand alone without looking like she was standing alone. She adjusted her hair with her right hand and pressed the receiver deeper into her left ear with the motion.
Prescott’s voice came through, tinny but clear. The transmitter would pick up everything within four feet until the battery died in roughly twelve hours. Then it would just look like an odd piece of lint.
“—so she shows up at the house, right on time, like she always does. And she’s moving slower than usual, I can see it. She tells me she needs to take next week off because she’s having surgery. Some kind of knee thing. And she’s standing there in my kitchen looking at me like I’m supposed to—what? Feel bad? She cleans my house. I don’t need her life story.”
The Harbor Light board member said something she couldn’t quite catch.
“Oh, I told her to take the time. I’m not a monster.” He laughed, that same head-tilt she’d clocked earlier. “But I alsotold her I’d need to bring someone else in while she’s out, and that if the replacement works out, we’d have to see. You should have seen her face. Fifteen years she’s been coming to that house. Fifteen years. And she looked at me like I’d kicked her dog.” He took a sip of his bourbon. “What does she expect? Loyalty? She scrubs my floors. I pay her a reasonable wage. That’s the arrangement. If she can’t hold up her end, I find someone who can.”
A pause. The board member murmured something.
“Exactly. And the thing is, she’ll come back. They always come back. She’ll cut her recovery short, show up limping, and I’ll let her because she’s the only one who knows where everything goes. But she’ll know. She’ll know she’s replaceable. And she’ll never ask me for anything again.” He raised his glass toward someone across the room. “That’s how you manage people. You remind them where they stand.”
Fallon held the wine glass against her sternum and didn’t drink.
She’d read Cassandra’s research. She’d seen the numbers—seven companies, hundreds of employees, millions in pension funds dissolved through shell entities and holding companies. She knew what Malcolm Prescott was. She’d known before she walked in tonight.
But hearing him talk was different. His business crimes were documented, quantified, already on her list. This was smaller. A woman who’d cleaned his house for fifteen years, and he was telling the story of threatening her job like it was amanagement tip. Proud of the lesson he’d taught someone who didn’t hold any power.
This was who Prescott was when the stakes were nothing. When there was no money on the table, no deal to close, no board to outmaneuver. Just a woman on her knees scrubbing his floors, and he still needed her to know he was above her.
Her jaw tightened. She made herself release it.
This is the right target.
The confirmation should have been clean. Professional. A box checked, a green light confirmed. Instead, it landed somewhere under her ribs and stayed there, hot and heavy. She thought about the man from Ohio—the one who’d written all those letters, done everything right, and died at fifty-eight with nothing because of Prescott’s actions.
