“Vendor is Oakwell Textile Services. Hotel orders are inflated by as much as forty percent on selected months. Credits are issued afterward to a separate consulting entity.”
“Owner?”
“Still tracing.”
“Shaw?”
“His brother-in-law has a minority interest.”
Samuel closed his eyes briefly.
Evelyn continued. “And there’s something else. Holloway’s company card shows yacht charters coded as client entertainment. Three weekends this year.”
“Guests?”
“No client names on two. The third names a software vendor whose CEO was in Singapore that weekend.”
Samuel looked through the window at the hotel he had spent half his life trying to protect from exactly this kind of rot.
“Keep going,” he said.
That evening, Hannah finished her shift and found a man waiting beneath the employee awning.
At first she did not recognize him because he was dry now. Samuel still wore the old coat, but his hair was combed and the exhaustion in his face had softened after sleep.
“You,” she said.
He held out her umbrella.
“I believe this is yours.”
She smiled despite herself. “You kept it.”
“It seemed rude not to.”
“How did you get back here?”
“I walk.”
“You should stay away. Holloway fired Luis today.”
Samuel’s expression changed. “Because of me?”
“Because Luis told him he was wrong.”
“And Rosa?”
“Hours cut.”
He looked down at the umbrella between them.
“Hannah, may I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you still here?”
She glanced toward the hotel windows. “Because the building isn’t him.”
Samuel said nothing.
“My grandmother worked laundry here when I was little,” Hannah continued. “She used to bring me through the kitchen after school. People fed me, let me sit in banquet rooms while they reset them, taught me how to fold napkins into things that looked like birds.” She smiled faintly.
“This place gave her a pension. Helped her when she got sick. It was never perfect, but people looked after one another.”
“What changed?”
“Holloway made people afraid to be caught caring.”
The sentence hit Samuel harder than the insult in the lobby had.
People afraid to be caught caring.