Page 41 of The CEO’s Assistant

"That's all I ask."

Petra worked from home, calling about every half hour to rule out one more person within Hale Capital who could have talked, and apologizing each time for the dog barking. Lauren called around, six women she and Cordelia knew between them who might have picked up the same rumor, while Dinah wrote the statement they'd release if the story ran. Etta stayed on the speaker from Seattle, in and out all morning, her keyboard going underneath everything.

Just after nine, Wren brought coffee in, then left without lingering. Cordelia was on the phone with Jo, working out how much Northstar's board needed to be told and when. She put her hand around the mug and drank it while Jo talked. It was good, the same as always, and some part of her noticed that Wren knew exactly how she favored her coffee.

At half past ten, Dinah's statement came through, and Wren read it before delivering it to Cordelia.

"Third paragraph," Wren said, setting the page down at her elbow. "Any transaction of this nature would be disclosed at the appropriate time. That tells her there's a deal. She'll take that sentence and run with it, and the narrative will be out of control."

Cordelia found the line and read it to herself twice. Wren was right. It admitted too much and would have to change. “Rewrite it. Take out any transaction of this nature. Say we don't comment on speculation and stop the sentence there."

"Taking it out," Dinah said. "That was my oversight."

Wren had left the room by the time Cordelia looked up, and she continued reading her paper. At a quarter to twelve, the room emptied out for lunch, the first gap all morning, and Wren came in with the afternoon's call sheet.

Cordelia went down the sheet. A call with Etta at one-forty that was blocked off til one fifty-five, and a call with Jo was scheduled at two. That was too close. "Move Etta up. Half past one."

"That's right after Teague. Even if it doesn’t run over, you’ll barely have space to breathe between calls."

"I can get off the phone with Teague. I need those extra minutes with Etta."

"Half past one." Wren wrote it, but she didn't leave right away. "The Foundation sent their final numbers over this morning. There were three hundred and four guests, and they cleared their financial target by about eleven percent.”

"Good."

"It was a good night," Wren said, almost as an afterthought.

Cordelia looked up at that. "Yeah, it was. You should be proud of yourself. It went smoothly because of you." She flicked her eyes back down to the sheet. "Send the figure to Dinah, she'll want it Monday."

"I'll send it now." Wren took her pad and left the office.

This was the part Cordelia had always been good at.

Harriet Teague had been an editor for eleven years and owed her nothing at all, which was why she took the call. Cordelia didn't ask her to kill the story; it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Instead, she told her the two things Lindqvist had gotten wrong. She guaranteed that when there was finally something to announce, the Ledger would have it first and hear it directly from her, on the record. Harriet gave her two days.

Jo took it better than she'd feared. Etta used every one of her fifteen minutes. By two, Petra had been through everyone in the building with access and came back with nothing, which made it an external leak—Northstar's own lawyers, most likely, somebody junior who'd talked over dinner.

Etta came back on at half past two. She wanted the date Cordelia had signed the sale, because the clock on how long they could stay quiet started that day.

Cordelia was reading back through the papers and put her hand out for the last page. It was there before she'd finished the movement, open and facing her.

"October third," she said into the phone, and kept reading.

Dinah had the Ledger's business page up on the big screen, and at four o'clock the top story was still about a shipping merger nobody cared about. Cordelia watched the clock go to five past and then ten past, and something let go in her chest that she'd been carrying since the phone rang that morning. Nine hours. Thirty years of this, and it still felt like getting away with something.

"Close it," she said. "You'll drive yourself mad."

At half past four, she asked Wren what she thought of the revised statement.

"It looks fine," Wren said.

That morning she had read the same page once and found the sentence two lawyers and a communications director had walked straight past. She'd been like this in April, over the Halvorsen business. She got very quiet when she was working at the top of her ability, and Cordelia had learned to leave her alone in it.

At five, Lauren asked whether anyone would think less of her if she went home and changed, and nobody would.

"Half past six," Cordelia said. "All of you back in here. Twenty minutes and then I'll let you go."

Somebody ordered in Chinese food at around six, and by half past the cartons had been pushed to the far end of the table. Lauren had changed out of her tennis clothes and looked worse for it. Petra was on the speaker. And Etta had stayed on call past nine her own time to be there for it. Cordelia sat at the end of the table and looked at them for a moment before she started.