Charlie nodded, unable to do much more. She was in shock that the life that had thrown her away was somehow back to fuck things up again. Just when she was finally feeling like she was getting herself and her life together.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Harper asked. “I really want to talk about it. I think I need to understand a little more about what is going on. I can try to help. Refer you to a good lawyer.” She didn’t look upset or angry. Her face was blank, and Charlie desperately wanted to know what she was thinking.
And she really needed someone to talk to about all this shit. “Yeah, and you deserve the whole story. And I probably do need to talk to an attorney.”
Harper was in shock. What the fuck was the SEC doing looking for Charlie? Or should she say Charlotte? She knew that was her name, but hearing her called that so formally was jarring.
The look of repressed terror on Charlie’s face when Mr. Woodall had introduced himself had pulled at her heartstrings and worried her. And yet, the longer Mr. Woodall had talked, the more Harper had thought Charlie was hiding something, so she was relieved when Charlie agreed to talk to her.
They moved upstairs wordlessly. Franky was snoozing on the couch when they arrived. “Do you want some water?”
“Sure, thank you,” Charlie said. Her voice was as small as it had been the first time she’d walked into Scissor and Gavel. Harper wanted to comfort her, yet something about the whole interaction felt off, and she just needed to know the full truth.
Harper filled two glasses from the refrigerator. As she handed one to Charlie and sat on the couch, she said, “Why did you really get fired, Charlie?”
She took a long sip of water and sighed. “I signed an NDA. I can’t talk about it.”
“For today, I’m your attorney, remember? You have attorneyclient privilege at the moment.”
Charlie squinted at her. “I thought you’d said you couldn’t be my attorney because of our relationship, but I need to talk about it. I want to talk to you about it.” She sighed again. “I found an anomaly in one of the algorithms for a new series of securities the team was working on. I thought it was an honest mistake, so I took it to my boss. I don’t have any proof, but the way he reacted, I’m surehewas hiding something.”
“So what happened after that?”
“He told me he’d look into it. But twenty-three minutes later, he showed up in my office with our general counsel, HR, and an NDA. Oh, and security standing outside the closed door to my office. They said my position was being eliminated, and I could either sign the NDA, take the payout, and get out quietly, or I would regret it because I’d never be free of them. Even though I wasn’t entirely sure of what I’d found.”
Harper was shocked. “So you just took the payout and signed the NDA?”
“I was blindsided. I didn’t start my morning thinking about what I was going to look into. I found an inconsistency in a normal review that was present everywhere in every file that I checked from this year and last year. I popped into my boss’s office to discuss it. He said he wasn’t aware of anything but would look into it. Then, they showed me the door.”
“But why’d you sign the NDA? Did you really need the money that badly that you just went along with whatever shit they were trying to cover up? Were you really that afraid of them?” Harper was trying to give Charlie the benefit of the doubt, but how could she have just rolled over like that? Didn’t she have any principles? Harper was getting a sickening feeling that maybe Charlie wasn’t the person she’d thought she was. Maybe she was like the people who didn’t stand up for what was right and had been responsible for Kelly’s death.
“It all just happened so fast. And D. B. Graves has a lot of weight behind it, and it was all so intimidating…I just didn’t know what to do. And it was so high pressure, I didn’t have time to think.”
At the name D. B. Graves, Harper’s blood turned to ice. Maybe shewasone of the people responsible for Kelly’s death. “So you just took the easy way out and covered up whatever shady shit they were doing? How could you do that? People could have gotten hurt, and you were fine with that?”
“What people? I didn’t know then and still don’t know the extent of any of it. I have no real idea what was going on.”
Anger turned the ice in Harper’s veins into lava, and she had to move, work off some of her feelings. She started to pace. “So because youdidn’t knowexactly what they were doing wrong, you were just going to let those fuckers get away with it? That company is disgusting. I can’t believe you took blood money and walked away.” Harper rested her hands on the windowsill and looked out on the street, wondering how the world just kept going, people just kept walking by. Somehow, their lives were continuing to go on even as hers was tilting off its axis.
“But I didn’t keep it. I donated it weeks ago.”
Charlie moved next to Harper and tried to put her arm around her, but Harper shook her off, spinning to look at her. “The thing is, when you just take the payout and don’t do anything, people can die.”
“That seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? We’re talking about potentially overvaluing a series of new securities that are only open to sophisticated investors. Maybe some of them paid too much, which is horrible and gross, but it isn’t like that could actually kill someone or even rob someone of their entire life savings.” She reached for Harper’s hand, but Harper took a step back and shook her off.
Tears were building in her eyes, and she needed to getCharlie out of there. “That’s the thing, though. You can’t know that. One action can have a ripple effect. Yourcompany, D. B. Graves—”
“My ex-company. I don’t work there anymore.”
Harper shook her head in disgust. “It isn’t like you left there for some principled reason. They fired you to cover up the truth, and you let them buy you. But sure, if it makes you feel better, yourex-companyhas a private equity arm that acquired the majority stake in a company that produces train car chassis. About six years ago, they discovered an issue with a mechanical component in the chassis of certain commuter train cars. Apparently, it would have cost billions of dollars if they’d owned up to it and done the recall, and after all, it had been an issue for years with no problems because it took the perfect storm of circumstances for it to malfunction. So when someone within the organization found out, they did the same thing that you did. Took a payout and signed a fucking NDA. But you know, on a cold, icy, February morning, the stars aligned, and an elevated train car derailed in Chicago. The deaths of twelve people, including my wife, could have been prevented if not for fucking corporate greed and a few unprincipled people who discovered the truth and allowed themselves to be bought. Someone like you probably tells themselves the same story you do but is the reason my wife is dead.”
All of the color drained out of Charlie’s face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t, I mean I just…of course I’d heard of that accident—the whole country did—but that division had nothing to do with mine, so I wasn’t really monitoring it or anything. And I didn’t know that was the accident that killed Kelly. I am so sorry, Harper.”
Harper wanted to yell and scream and throw things. None of this was fair. She’d finally taken a chance, opened herself up to something, and this was how it turned out. She’d been dating—falling for—someone who’d worked for the firm responsible for Kelly’s death. And evidently had no more moral conviction than the rest of them. “I mean, the fact that Kelly was killed in that incident isn’t the point. The point is that several people knew there was a problem, and all of them took a payout. The company had to pay up, but no one was ever even prosecuted. That attitude ofnotdoing the right thing because it’s expensive feeds directly into not doing the right thing because they paid you not to, and it fucking sickens me.” She rubbed circles around her temple with the fingers of one hand, trying to relieve some of the pressure building there. “I need to be alone right now.”
“I’m really sorry,” Charlie said. “I’m not the same person now that I was then. I feel like I’ve tried to explain that several times.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t really explain who you were before. And talk is cheap. Was the old you Charlotte and the new you Charlie?” Harper wasn’t sure why changing her name bugged her so much, but it really did now.
