Page 105 of Keller

I settleinto my chair and pull up the Eleanor Stone Historic Preservation Trust file for the third time in less than twenty-four hours. The numbers haven't changed. I keep hoping Imissed something, some explanation that makes the anomaly disappear.

I lean back in my chair and stare at the screen.

Then, I pull up the timeline I built yesterday and study it again. I click over to my email and see the draft email to Maris taunting me, daring me. I open it and read through the language again.

Dear Maris Intelligence Group,

I minimize the email and push back from my desk. Martin needs to see this before I take any external action. He's the gatekeeper. He decides what escalates and what closes.

Maybe he will not see anything, and then he makes the decision, not me, and we can both wipe our hands of this.

The walk down the hall feels longer than usual. My heels click against the tile, each step carrying me closer to a conversation I'm not sure I'm ready to have.

His door is open. He sits behind his desk, reviewing something on his screen.

I knock twice on the doorframe and then lean in.

"Got a minute?"

Martin looks up from his screen, expression neutral. "Mercer. Come in."

I step inside and close the door behind me. The click is loud, intensifying the thudding pulse in my ears. He gestures to the chair across from his desk. "What do you have?"

I sit and fold my hands in my lap. I didn't bring any notes because I now know this material well enough to present it clean to a stadium full of people.

"I found an anomaly in digging, and I'm not sure if I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill. Wanted you to give me your opinion before opening flood gates. There's a dormant trust account with a single transaction two weeks before RobertStone's death, made by Robert Stone. Could be a coincidence. It's not a Stone Intermodal account."

Martin's pen stops moving. He sets it down parallel to his notepad. "Walk me through it."

"The Eleanor Stone Historic Preservation Trust was established in 2003. From what I can tell, it was for his wife, and it was very active until her death in 2009. There was some spending directly after, but then it stopped and there's been no activity for close to seventeen years. Then on September 29, a ten-thousand-dollar wire to Maris Intelligence Group went out of the account."

"What's Maris?"

"Maritime risk consulting. Shipping security. Cargo exposure analysis."

Martin's eyes stay steady on mine. "What would a maritime consultant do for a preservation trust?"

"Nothing." I keep my voice level. "Unless the trust funded something unrelated to its stated purpose."

Silence stretches between us.

"Why does that matter?"

I take a breath. "If Robert Stone retained outside risk consultants privately, through a dormant family trust instead of corporate channels, he may have been investigating something he didn't want visible on company records."

"Investigating what?"

This is the part that kept me awake last night. The part that makes my stomach tight.

"I don't know yet. But the sequence is suggestive. Maris retained September 29. If they delivered a report before his death, and if that report flagged shipping exposure tied to Gulf Meridian during the October window." I pause. "It could be linked to the three reroutes made by David Parsale."

Martin's thumb and index finger twitch back and forth rapidly, like he's grasping at something tiny.

"You're suggesting he found something. And then he died. And then evidence moved."

"I'm suggesting the pattern meets the threshold for testing."

His gaze holds mine for a long moment. "Have you contacted Maris?"