“What do you mean, suspended?” A long silence.

“No.

No — I can explain.

Just let me — ” And then he stopped talking, because whoever was on the other end had stopped listening, and that is a thing Damon was about to learn a great deal about.

Chapter 14 — I Let the Documents Answer

By the end of that week, Damon was terminated.

Wade’s consulting contract was canceled the same day, and Redpoint was pulled into a civil dispute over the improperly obtained payments — eighty-six thousand dollars that a company was now going to spend real effort clawing back.

Damon’s parents, the ones who had laughed so warmly about my little career break, discovered that some of the money he’d taken had come from them, and they began, coldly, to ask for it back.