Then I hung up, and I opened my laptop, and I sent the file Phoebe and I had built — every invoice, every transfer, every traced dollar — to every independent director of Vance Global Medical, with a single cover line requesting an emergency session under Article Seven.

And I called for the car to take me to the airport.

Chapter 8 — The Gate

I was not running away.

I want that understood, because Flynn assumed it, and he was wrong, and his being wrong is the center of this whole story.

The Seattle acquisition was scheduled to close in less than forty-eight hours, and I had come to understand, through Phoebe’s work, that Flynn intended to use that closing as cover — a large, legitimate transaction inside which a great deal of money could be moved and a great many trails could be muddied, all at once, in the noise of a real deal.

To stop the theft, I had to stop, or at least freeze, the deal.