I asked for my phone during a pause while staff continued preparing for delivery.

The document and check were photographed and put aside rather than allowed to occupy the work area.

Inside the envelope was another page, apparently folded in with the proposed agreement by mistake.

A payment authorization to Beacon Communications.

$155,000.

I recognized Garrett’s approval and Kendra’s name.

The agency was familiar from a procurement comparison I had reviewed months earlier.

At the bottom, someone had written: “Urgent.