Chapter 18 — Seattle

We stopped the acquisition in Seattle twelve minutes before it was due to be signed.

I walked into that conference room at midnight with Arthur on the phone and the board’s resolution in my hand, and I halted a transaction that a great many powerful people very much wanted to happen, and I did it because the woman who now chaired the company had looked at it closely and did not like what was hiding inside it.

The full outside audit that followed, unhurried and thorough, uncovered four point six million dollars in diverted funds — nearly double what Phoebe’s first pass had surfaced.