Page 48 of The Marriage Blunder

The phone rang while I was still in the shower, a vibration that echoed through the glass, multiplying in the chrome. I let it go to voicemail. Anyone who really needed me would call back.

It rang again, exactly four minutes later. I wrapped a towel around my waist and answered on the second ring. “Miles.”

“Ken,” said Cranston. He was one of the few people I knew who pronounced my name like it was a reference to a historical event. “Do you have a minute?”

I checked the clock, though it was for effect. “Of course.”

He got straight to the point. “I have the name.”

I did not have to ask what name. “Who?”

“Harlan Voss,” he said, and I could tell from the timbre of his voice that this was not a revelation, but a confirmation.

I ran the name through my internal register. “Minority shareholder. Board seat on Braddock and on the old Bryant affiliate. Never voted his weight, but always in the meetings. Institutional memory.”

“That’s the one,” said Miles. “Your sister reached him through a private line. No record of direct contact before last night.”

“She didn’t find him on her own,” I said, already triangulating the vector. “Someone inside pointed her in his direction.”

“That would be my guess,” said Cranston. “I traced the origin to a bcc on the meeting schedule two weeks ago. The bcc itself is unremarkable, but the recipient was copied from an internal calendar event—one that only the top five on your admin chain have access to.”

A short list, then. “Any other anomalies?”

“Voss has logged into the board packet portal from two locations: his own office, and the reception lounge at Brucker & Hill. Both standard. The access logs from your side are tight, no leaks there. The soft spot is the events end.”

I nodded, the pieces starting to coalesce. “You’re saying it’s not a direct leak. It’s operational. Someone gave Voss a pretext to act.”

“That’s my reading,” said Miles. “Want me to push?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Let me look at it.”

“Ken,” said Cranston, and there was something in his voice that was not quite alarm, but adjacent to it. “This is coordinated. She’s not improvising. There are three other minority holders with similar profiles. They’re not moving yet, but if Voss does, they might.”

I filed it, then said, “Thank you, Miles. Keep me posted.”

We ended the call.

I stood, towel leaking water onto the tile, and ran through the chain. The implication was simple. Carolyn was not just pushing for noise. She was laying in the scaffolding for a boardroom coup, and she had help from inside.

I dressed: the navy suit, the shirt with enough texture to signal attention but not enough to draw comment. I skipped the tie. The meetings today were going to be technical, not theatrical.

In the study, I sat at the desk, opened the laptop, and pulled up the internal scheduling platform. I navigated to the admin log, scrolled through the recent access, and saw it: three new entries, all within the last five days, all from the same credential string.

I picked up the phone and dialed my executive assistant Edward.

He answered on the first ring, his default setting somewhere between boredom and cosmic indifference. “Mr. James?”

“Edward. I need an audit. Quiet.”

“Parameters?”

“Every internal communication referencing the shareholder meeting schedule in the last three weeks. I want to know who accessed, who sent, and if anything was forwarded outside the usual channels. Flag anything that doesn’t look like standard operating procedure.”

“By end of day?”

“By lunch,” I said, and waited.

He said, “Understood,” and hung up.