Page 30 of Cruel Lies

Whitmore Stearns occupies floors thirty through forty-four of a glass tower that looks like a knife somebody stood on its end. I've been here before plenty of times—holiday parties, happy hours, Todd's various promotion ceremonies. But I'm not the same old me walking through these doors. I've shed that old Cali like a snakeskin.

Glover meets me at the elevator bank on thirty-eight.

He's smaller than I remember, compact and silver-templed, with the restless eyes of a man who's already three meetings ahead of the one he's in. He shakes my hand and grins.

"Whitmore Stearns rolled out the carpet," he says, jumping right into the business. "They love the idea of running fraud detection in-house. They're sending their tech people and a couple MDs."

"How many MDs?" I ask, as casually as I can.

"Couple. Whoever was free." He frowns. "Why?"

"No real reason. The more eyes, the better."

He gives me a look I can't decipher, then shrugs and gestures down the hall toward a glass-walled conference room.Whitmore Stearnsis etched into the doors in frosted serif. Through the glass, I can see a long table, screens on the walls, the back of a few heads in expensive suits.

None of them are Todd's head.

Not yet.

My stomach does the elevator-cable thing, the same drop I felt at the lounge, except this time it isn't a man causing it.

And I'm not the one who's about to fall.

With a deep breath, I enter the room ahead of Emmett. He introduces me to the men in the room, none of whom I've met before, thank God, because that would've thrown off this whole plan.

It's one eventful hello-and-handshake after another, though. Once I've made the rounds, a junior banker steps up and offers to help me get my laptop connected to the big screen so I can play my slides while I present. I follow him and stand off to the side while he fishes out an HDMI cable and jimmies it into the port on my computer.

Watching him gives me an excuse to keep my head down, my hair falling forward like a curtain that hides my face.

That's when I hear it.

"You tell Todd you were in town, Emmett?" one of the suits asks. "He'd want to be in on this. Fraud's right up his alley."

I keep my eyes on the screen. My cursor finds the file. I open it with the steadiest hand in Manhattan.

"No," Emmett says, distracted, scrolling something on his phone. "Didn't realize you two ran in the same verticals."

"Eh, you know how it is. Small world." The speaker turns in his squeaky chair and orders someone, "Hey, Jack—go grab Todd Bradshaw off the floor. Tell him to get up here."

"On it, sir."

Footsteps thump away. The door swings open, swings closed.

I press my lips together hard, because if I don't, I'll smile, and a smile right now would ruin everything.

It's happening.

It's actually happening.

Just like I planned.

It's.

Almost.

Time.

At 11:03, the glass door opens.