Kelsey remained by the doorway while Maya gathered her things. "I'm sorry," she said when Preston was no longer close enough to hear. Maya stopped and looked at her. "You could have said something," she answered. Kelsey's mouth opened, but she had no response that did not sound like an excuse.
At three-twenty, Maya stepped outside Sterling Vane with her belongings in a paper shopping bag. She had rent due the following week, a younger brother whose nursing-school textbooks she sometimes paid for, and health insurance she could not afford to lose. The company handbook in her bag promised employees protection from retaliation for reporting inaccurate records. She had read that paragraph twice the previous year after a coworker was transferred for questioning a manager's expense claims, but knowing a policy existed had not made it work in time to protect her.
She sat at a bus stop for several minutes without moving. Then she took the cream-colored card from the pocket of her jacket. Imani Brooks. A telephone number. No title.
Maya nearly put it away. A stranger could not undo an employment decision made by a chief operating officer, and calling the number felt embarrassingly close to asking for charity. Then she remembered how the woman had held Sienna's gaze, requested the notebook back, and thanked Maya for the water as though it were the most important part of her morning. She saved the number on her phone without making the call.
Kelsey watched Maya leave from an upper lobby window. She had assisted with dismissals before and normally felt little beyond a vague relief that the problem belonged to someone else. This time she felt a weight in her stomach that remained after Maya disappeared around the corner. She knew the appointment had existed. She had seen it on the screen and repeated the claim that Imani was merely a walk-in because that was what Preston wanted to hear.
She went into the staff restroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Her lipstick was still perfect, and the name badge on her jacket was straight. For the first time, she saw those small signs of professionalism as a costume she had been wearing while acting in a way she would have criticized if she had watched somebody else do it. She returned to the desk without speaking and continued answering the phones until her shift ended.
At five-fifteen, Garrett Lyle came to Preston's office with a folder marked EXECUTIVE CONSULTING. Garrett was Sterling Vane's chief financial officer, a compact man with silver-rimmed glasses, twelve years at the company, and a reputation for making numbers appear orderly even when the people producing them were not. He had not invented Preston's more questionable practices, but he had learned to live beside them. The folder he carried was one reason he had recently started sleeping badly.
"The Hale Strategy invoice needs final approval before Monday," Preston said without looking up. Garrett sat down and opened the folder. "The cumulative amount is almost $1.8 million, Preston," he answered. "Someone will look when the acquisition audit begins."
"Nobody looks," Preston replied. He said it with the casual certainty of someone who had successfully avoided scrutiny for years. "These are routine advisory fees. Clear the current invoice and make sure the file is archived under strategy support before the board meeting."