She told him about the documents signed while Grant was heavily medicated and about the conversations that came afterward. She described the strange changes in the partnership files, the accountant's refusal to speak, and the evening when Harlon had told her she could not win because he had money and she had none. She told him about the apartment she believed someone had entered, taking care to say she had never identified who was responsible. Finally she explained the split lip Reese had noticed on her first night in the garage.
Two evenings before she arrived, a man had followed her out of a bus terminal and demanded to know whether she still had the files about Deacon Auto. She tried to walk away. He caught the strap of her bag, they struggled briefly, and she fell against a railing before she got free. She could not say whether the man worked for Harlon or was simply somebody trying to steal her bag. She had reported the encounter to terminal security, but she left town before she learned what became of it.
"That's why you wouldn't give me your last name," Reese said.
"It's why I didn't give anybody my last name." Her voice was steady again, but the muscles around her eyes had tightened. "I thought if I could find work where nobody knew me, I could save enough money to get the documents looked at properly. I wasn't trying to bring trouble here."
"You didn't bring trouble here," Reese said. "A man who follows an employee across the province brings his own trouble. But we don't answer it by doing something stupid on your behalf. We answer it by getting good advice and making a record."
Willa turned the folded corner of the intake folder flat again. "I've been handling this myself for a while."
"I can see that. I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying you don't have to while you're here." He leaned back, giving her room to reject the offer without losing the job.
"If you want, I'll put you in touch with a lawyer I trust. He'll tell you what the documents can prove and what they can't. You get to decide what happens after that."
The office seemed quiet in a new way. Through the open doorway came Sark's voice complaining about the price of a part and Fig answering that the price had not changed merely because Sark had complained loudly. Willa listened to the familiar sounds and tried to reconcile them with the unfamiliar offer. "All right," she said finally. "I'd like to talk to him."
Reese nodded and reached for his phone. Then he paused. "One more thing. We need your legal name for the payroll records, and you deserve to know what we're keeping and why. We can protect your privacy without pretending you have to disappear. I'll have Fig walk through the paperwork with you."
The directness of it moved her more than a reassuring speech would have. People had been making choices about her life without telling her for months. Reese was asking her to make this one herself.