Chapter 5 — The Signal Across the Room

Across the ballroom, near the edge of the small stage, Malcolm Langford caught my eye.

Malcolm was the chairman of Cardinal’s board, a careful, decent man who had spent eighteen hard months watching the company he loved sink under debt and mismanagement, and who had, in the end, been the one to reach out to my firm when the lenders began using the word liquidation.

He knew exactly who I was.