Chapter 12 - The Church Basement
The church basement smelled like burnt coffee and old carpet.
David sat beneath a bulletin board covered in children's drawings.
He looked nothing like the man who had once corrected my table settings with a ruler.
His shirt was wrinkled.
His eyes were swollen.
A detective sat ten feet away.
Mara stayed near the door.
Gabriel remained in the car because I had asked him to.
That had been his condition for not arguing harder.
David stood when I entered.
"I'm sorry."
"Sit down."
He sat.
I did not.
"You asked for me."
He nodded.
"Because I knew you wouldn't believe this from anyone else."
"Try me."
He slid a photocopy across the folding table.
An invoice from a consulting company I had never heard of.
Northbridge Strategic.
The receiving bank belonged to a subsidiary of Kane Urban Development.
The amount was seventy-five thousand dollars.
The description read stakeholder research.
"What is this?"
"Roland's people told me they had someone inside Kane. They said the redevelopment vote was already being influenced from both sides."
My stomach tightened.
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"Then why am I here?"
David looked at me.
"Because the payment was authorized with Gabriel's executive code."
The room went silent.
I heard Mara inhale behind me.
"Codes can be stolen," I said.
"I know."
"Signatures can be forged."
"I know."
"Then stop looking at me like you just told me my husband is guilty."
David's eyes filled.
"I'm looking at you like somebody wanted me to think he was."
That stopped me.
He reached into his coat and removed a folded piece of paper.
"I kept one email off the server. Printed it."
It had come from an address made to look like Gabriel's chief operating officer.
The wording was careful.
No direct instructions.
No names.
Only a sentence about keeping the Hale team emotionally reactive before the final bid presentation.
Emotionally reactive.
A phrase designed to sound ugly in court.
Mara took the page without touching the printed surface.
"This domain is wrong," she said.
One letter in Kane was replaced with a character that looked nearly identical.
A fake account.
David stared at her.
"So it's fake?"
"Probably."
He put his face in his hands.
"I ran because I thought I had helped both sides. I thought everyone would say I invented the whole thing to save myself."
"You did help one side," I said.
He looked up.
"You helped Preston. You helped Roland. You changed my section. You stood there while they treated me like something less than human."
Tears moved down his face.
"I know."
"Good."
He flinched.
"Keep knowing it."
I sat across from him.
"But running makes every true thing you say easier to call a lie."
He swallowed.
"What should I do?"
For one second, I understood why people liked power.
He was asking me to tell him how to survive.
I could have enjoyed that.
Instead I said, "Tell the detective everything. Including the parts that make you look bad. Especially those."
David nodded.
The detective moved closer.
Mara stepped outside to call the special committee.
I stood to leave.
David said my name.
I turned.
"There is one more thing."
I waited.
"Roland did not choose The Imperial Room because you worked there."
My skin went cold.
"What does that mean?"
"He knew you worked there because someone gave him your schedule."
"Who?"
David's mouth trembled.
"The schedule came from a private security report."
I stared at him.
"Whose security report?"
"Gabriel's."
Outside, beyond the basement windows, my husband's black car was parked beneath the streetlight.
---
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