So he kept his voice even.
"Call Rachel Vance. Tell her Malik Ashworth is in the lobby."
"Move," Curtis said.
Preston turned away. "If he gives you trouble, call the police. Have them meet you outside. I want this handled."
Malik looked toward the street through the glass. A bus stopped at the curb. A man in a tan coat walked a dog past the doors. Nobody outside knew that a three-hundred-fifty-million-dollar financing agreement lay across the floor behind him.
Curtis pushed him forward another step.
Up on the fourteenth floor, Rachel Vance checked her watch. It was 10:04. She had been in the boardroom since 9:30, reviewing the final voting documents and waiting for Malik to arrive.
Rachel was forty-seven, sharp-eyed, and respected for being difficult to impress. She had become independent board chair after a group of institutional shareholders demanded stronger oversight at Yarrow Industries. Unlike Preston, she rarely raised her voice. She preferred questions, data, and silence long enough for people to reveal what they had been avoiding.
She had spent months working with Malik and Odell on the transaction. At first, she was skeptical about a nineteen-year-old serving as the principal decision-maker of such a substantial investment. Then she met him in New York. He had asked harder questions about plant safety, pension obligations, and workforce retention than many directors twice his age. He knew the numbers. More importantly, he understood that a company's financial problems affected people who could not simply sell their stock and walk away.
Malik was unfailingly early. That was why she was worried.
"Has anyone heard from him?" she asked.
The chief financial officer shook his head. "His last message confirmed the schedule."
A board member near the window shrugged. "Maybe traffic."
Rachel didn't think so. She checked her phone and saw a notification from the building's internal incident system. She had been granted alert access after a prior security incident involving a vendor.
LOCATION: MAIN LOBBY.
SUBJECT NAME: MALIK ASHWORTH.
STATUS: SECURITY DETENTION.
For one second, she could not make sense of the words.
Then she stood so quickly her chair scraped across the floor.
"Oh, God."
"Rachel?" the CFO asked.
"Security has Malik."
"What?"
"He's downstairs. They're detaining him."
She ran toward the door. Two directors followed. She called the lobby desk from the elevator, but the line was busy. The floors passed far too slowly. Rachel pressed the lobby button again, even though she knew it wouldn't make the elevator move faster.
She imagined Malik standing in the wrong part of the building, perhaps being told to wait while reception corrected a badge. She hoped the alert was a mistake.
The doors opened.
She saw Malik near the front entrance, wrists locked behind his back. Curtis held his arm. Preston stood a few feet away, checking his watch as though the matter had already ended.
Rachel's fear turned into fury.
"STOP!"
Her voice echoed against the glass.
Curtis froze.
"Get those cuffs off him. Right now."
Preston turned, irritated. "Rachel, security is handling an unauthorized visitor."
She moved between them. "That's Malik Ashworth."