Marcus's face had gone the color of ash.
"You have a mole," she whispered. "And I'm the only one who can help you find them before the SEC does."
The broken glass sparkled under the chandelier like diamonds. Julian was not looking at it. He was looking at Marcus.
"Marcus," Julian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "What is she talking about?"
Marcus swallowed hard and adjusted his glasses. His hands were trembling.
"Julian, she's a waitress. She's probably reading it wrong. Portuguese? Please. It's standard boilerplate."
Annie cut in. "The clause identifies hundreds of millions in nonrecoverable debt. It is buried under the environmental-compliance section. Why would a German-Japanese consortium route environmental liability through a Brazilian shell company, Marcus?"
Julian turned his gaze back to the CFO who had been with him for five years, the numbers man, the safe pair of hands.
"Show me," Julian demanded.
Marcus hesitated. "The documents are already packed away in the secure briefcase."
"Open the damn briefcase, Marcus."
Marcus fumbled with the latches and pulled out the thick stack of papers. Annie flipped to Annex B, page forty-two.
"There," she said.
Julian squinted at the fine print. He pulled out his phone and used a translation app. The result appeared on the screen: liability for four hundred million dollars in non-performing assets held by Rio Verde.
Julian looked up. His eyes were cold.
"You tried to bankrupt me."
"No, no," Marcus stammered, backing away. "It was von Amsel. He told me it was just a formality. He said if I kept quiet about the shell company, they'd give me a seat on the new board.
Julian, listen. The company is still good. The debt can be restructured."
"Get out," Julian said.
"Julian, please."
"Get out before I throw you out the window."
Marcus grabbed his briefcase and ran. He did not wait for the elevator. He took the stairs.
Julian stood in the room breathing heavily. He ran a hand through his perfect hair, ruining it, then collapsed into a chair. Suddenly he looked very young and very overwhelmed.
"One point two billion," he muttered. "If I absorb that debt, Thorne Capital is finished. I'm leveraged to the hilt for this. I'll lose everything."
He looked up at Annie. "Can I back out?"
"The contract is signed. You can't simply walk away," she said, her mind already racing through international contract law. "But you can challenge the specific clause if we prove bad-faith concealment. To do that, we need proof that somebody knew about the debt and actively hid it. We need internal communications."
"We'll never get those," Julian said, putting his head in his hands. "They're encrypted. German privacy laws are ironclad."
Annie picked up the check he had written her. Fifty thousand dollars. She looked at it for a moment, folded it, and placed it in her pocket.
"You need to sleep, Mr. Thorne."
"Sleep? I'm about to lose a billion dollars."
"You're not going to lose anything tonight. The banks don't open until nine. That gives us ten hours. Go home, shower, change, and meet me at your office at seven."
"And what are you going to do?"
She walked toward the door. "I'm going home to Queens, feeding my cat, and making a few phone calls. My father didn't leave me money, Julian, but he left me contacts. Some of those contacts owe the Vance family a favor."
She left him amid the ruins of his dinner and the shards of his trust.
The subway ride back to Queens took forty minutes. She sat squeezed between a man who smelled of wet dog and a teenager blasting music, but her mind was in Munich. Who was von Amsel working with? Why target Julian?
When she reached her tiny apartment, she did not sleep. She opened a closet and pulled down an old dusty box. Inside was her father's Rolodex and an old secure satellite phone he had kept from his diplomatic days. She stared at it. The phone had not been charged in two years.
She plugged it in. It flickered to life. She scrolled through the names: Ambassador Lee, General Harker, the Duchess of Kent, and then one she had not thought about in years.
The Ghost.
It was not a real name. It was a nickname for a forensic accountant named Silas who had once worked for the United Nations tracking warlord money. He was one of the few people who had tried to warn her father before the scandal broke. He was also one of the few who still believed Arthur Vance had been framed.
She dialed the number. It rang four times.
"This line is dead," a distorted voice answered.
"The owl flies at midnight," she said, repeating one of her father's old code phrases.
Silence. Then the voice changed, becoming normal and gruff.
"Annie? Is that you?"
"Hello, Silas. I need a favor."
"I heard about Arthur," Silas said, his voice softening. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him."
"You can't save him," she said. "But you can save me. I need you to dig into a company called Rio Verde Holdings. I need a link between it and Heinrich von Amsel."
"Von Amsel? The German steel king? Annie, you're playing with fire. That man eats governments for breakfast."
"I know. But he's trying to eat my boss. If my boss goes down, I don't get my check, and I really need that check."
Silas exhaled. "Give me three hours. But Annie, be careful. Von Amsel is connected to old money. The kind of money that does not forgive interference."
The next morning at 6:55 a.m., Annie walked into the lobby of Thorne Capital wearing her best suit, a charcoal-gray number she had bought for interviews three years earlier. It was tight in the shoulders but looked professional.
The security guard stopped her. "Deliveries in the back, miss."