“Understood,” he said.

“The fraudulent payment requests are frozen.

The investigators are ready.” Gabriel’s head came up.

“Fraudulent?” “Ms.

Hargrove directed three vendors to add false consulting fees,” Quentin said, his voice level and precise through the little speaker, “totaling two hundred forty thousand dollars, and routed them to an agency owned by her brother.” “That’s a lie,” Sabine said, and stepped back.

I laid the bank records on the marble beside the recorder.

“Your brother’s agency,” I said, “was formed eleven days after your engagement.” Gabriel picked the papers up, and I watched my son seem to age a decade in the reading of them.

Chapter 15 — Before the Second Date

She tried tears then — the fast, on-command kind. Gabriel, your mother hates me, she set all of this up, you can see that. But he only shook his head, slowly, without looking up from the papers.

“No,” he said.