“You showed me a document transferring my authority.

I never signed it.”

Cressida’s expression sharpened into something suddenly alert.

She, at least, was quick.

She had already begun to understand that the evening was not the one she had dressed for.

Chapter 7 — Six Months

The unraveling had begun six months earlier, with a number that was wrong by a little.

I still read the company’s financials — that had never stopped, firewall or no firewall — and I have the kind of mind that itches at a figure that doesn’t sit right, the way a musician flinches at a note slightly off pitch.

It was a consulting expense, modest, buried in a quarterly report, paid to a firm I didn’t recognize.

I might have let it go.