Page 171 of His Good Girl

“I’m still angry,” I added.

Avery muttered, “Fair.”

Benjamin said, “Group healing is beautiful and inefficient. May we return to burying our enemies?”

That broke the tension by exactly enough. I picked up my laptop and turned it toward them. Ryan’s video window was already open. He had been listening for the last thirty seconds because Benjamin had apparently patched him in without telling anyone, which I would have admonished him for later if it had not been so useful.

Ryan waved from his screen. “Hi, ladies. Excellent work. Reckless. Horrifying. Really top-tier amateur fieldcraft.”

Jules blinked. “Who the hell is that?”

“Ryan Morrison,” Benjamin said. “Our glitter-covered crowbar.”

Ryan smiled. “Digital forensics consultant, officially. Occasional rescuer of billionaires with poor window discipline.”

Avery’s face went red.

I shot a look at the screen. “Ryan.”

“What? It’s relevant.”

“It is not.”

“It is painfully relevant. But fine.” He leaned closer to his camera. “Becca is not Becca. Becca is Melanie Arendt. Contract operator for Meridian Strategic. She’s a former political opposition researcher and a former crisis communications associate. Currently, she’s a woman who should have used a better phone.”

Benjamin’s eyes narrowed. “You can prove that?”

“I can point you to the doors discovery should kick down.” Ryan tapped something offscreen. “Between Jules’s recording and what I pulled together on Rookline, Meridian, Skylark, and Lang’s people, you don’t just have extortion. You have attempted interference with a public contract, illegal surveillance, possible conspiracy, and enough reputational C4 to make Grant Vale consider a monastery.”

Dana entered without knocking because Dana did not believe in doors during active combat. “Did someone say reputational C4?”

Benjamin looked up. “Must you arrive at the good lines?”

“I feel them in my bones.” She took in Avery, Jules, the phone, the notebook, and Ryan on screen. “What did I miss?”

“Avery and Jules did something reckless and useful,” Benjamin said.

Dana looked at Avery. “Of course they did.”

Avery gave a tiny, apologetic shrug. Dana’s eyes dropped to the notebook. She picked it up, flipped three pages, and paused. Then, to Avery, she said, “This is good.”

Avery’s throat moved. “Thank you.”

“Don’t look touched. You still should have told someone with a legal budget before doing it.”

“I know.”

“Good.” Dana set the notebook down. “Now what?”

Ryan grinned from the laptop. “Now we make noon very unpleasant for Lang.”

CHAPTER 20

Avery

By 11:55, Conference Room B had been turned into something between a courtroom, a hostage exchange, and one of those glossy corporate war rooms where men said things like strategic exposure while quietly committing emotional arson. The long table had been cleared except for three laptops, two legal pads, a small recording device Tom kept checking like a nervous father at a recital, and a black USB drive lying in the center of the table like the world’s least romantic engagement ring.

Callum sat at the head of the table, calm in a way that no longer fooled me. His suit was dark, his tie perfectly straight, his expression cold and unreadable, but I could see the tension in the hand resting near his legal pad. I could see the very faint flex of his fingers every time Benjamin said the word Lang. I could see the quiet violence he had tucked away so tightly it had become posture.