Said he was concerned about me. Holt thought about that, then typed Have lunch with him. A longer pause this time. Are you serious? Yes.
Let him think he's ahead. Don't mention the documents. Don't mention me. Don't mention Marlowe. Talk about your mother.
Let him be concerned. Another pause. He could almost feel her deciding on the other side of the phone. Okay, she wrote. Okay.
But you should know something else. He asked me specifically if I'd been in contact with my mother's ride-share driver. That landed hard. Spencer knew about Thursday night. Somehow, he already knew about Thursday night.
Which meant he had been watching Camille more closely than she realized, and he'd moved faster than Holt had given him credit for. He typed How did he know about me? He said one of the hotel staff mentioned a driver who helped me out. He said he was grateful someone looked out for his sister. A beat.
Then he didn't sound grateful. No. Holt imagined he didn't. He put the phone face down on the table and looked at his legal pad. 72 hours had sounded comfortable this morning.
Right now, it sounded optimistic. He picked up the phone again and called Thea directly. She answered on the second ring. Spencer knows, Holt said without preamble. I was afraid of that.
Her voice was controlled but tight. How much? He knows I was in your office this morning. He knows I drove Camille Thursday night. He doesn't know what we have yet.
If he did, he'd be moving money right now, not scheduling lunch. How do you know he isn't moving money right now? I don't, Holt said. That's why I need something from you. I need the name of Spencer's primary financial liaison at Hadley Capital.
Not his assistant, his actual numbers person. The one who executes the transfers. Thea was quiet for a moment. Then, that would be a man named Davis Pruitt. He's been Spencer's VP of trust operations for 4 years.
4 years again. Holt wrote the name down. Davis Pruitt, he repeated. Has Pruitt ever raised any internal concerns about the transfers? Not formally, Thea said.
But about 18 months ago, he requested a meeting with Reginald Hadley's estate attorney, not Spencer's attorney, Reginald's original attorney. The meeting was canceled. The attorney retired 3 months later. Who canceled the meeting? A pause that meant Thea already knew the answer.
Spencer's office, she said. Holt looked at the name on his legal pad. Davis Pruitt. A man who had tried to raise a flag 18 months ago and had been quietly shut down. A man who might under the right circumstances be willing to raise it again.
I need his personal contact information, Holt said. Not his office number. Holt, Thea, if Spencer is already moving, we don't have 72 hours. We might have 24. I need Pruitt.
A long pause. Then, I'll get it to you within the hour. Be careful how you approach him. If he goes back to Spencer, he won't, Holt said. I know the type.
He didn't raise that flag 18 months ago because he's corrupt. He raised it because he's scared. Scared men want out. They just need someone to tell them the door is open. He hung up, drank his cold coffee, thought about Marlowe, who was at school right now in her fifth grade classroom, probably arguing with somebody about something with complete confidence in her own position, which she did on a near daily basis.
She didn't know any of this existed. She didn't know that somewhere in this city, a woman with dementia was asking about a daughter she'd given away. She didn't know that a man in a glass office was quietly stealing the future that had been meant for her. She would know. When the time was right, she would know everything.
But first, Holt had work to do. Davis Pruitt's personal number arrived 40 minutes later. Holt waited until 2:00 in the afternoon before calling. Long enough that Pruitt would have finished lunch. Early enough that he'd still be in his office before the end of day scramble.
It rang four times. He almost expected voicemail. Hello. Cautious. Not this is Davis Pruitt, just hello.
A man who had learned to be careful about unknown numbers. Mr. Pruitt, Holt said. My name is Holt Pemberton. I'm a former FBI financial crimes investigator.
I'm not calling in any official capacity. I'm calling because I think you already know what I found in Spencer Hadley's transfer records, and I think you've been waiting a long time for someone to call. Silence on the line. Long enough that Holt counted to seven in his head. Then Pruitt said very quietly, "Who gave you this number? " "Someone who wants to fix this," Holt said.
Another silence. Shorter this time. "I can't talk from here," Pruitt said. "I'm not asking you to talk from there," Holt said. "I'm asking you to meet me tonight.
Somewhere you choose. Somewhere Spencer doesn't know about. " The pause this time was the pause of a man weighing two kinds of fear against each other. The fear of moving and the fear of staying still. "7:00," Pruitt said. "Lander's coffee on Tremont, not the main room, the back. " "I'll be there. " Holt said.
He ended the call, let out a slow breath. The coffee shop meeting with Pruitt was 6 hours away. In the meantime, he went back to the documents. He was an hour deep into a series of 2021 asset transfers when his front door opened. He looked up, hand already moving toward the inside of his jacket by pure reflex.
And then Marlowe walked in, backpack half hanging off one shoulder, shoes untied, holding a folder of schoolwork against her chest. "Early release," she announced, dropping her bag in the hallway. "There was an email," he said. "You didn't check your email. " He hadn't. He closed the laptop partway.
"How was school? " he asked. "We learned about trusts today. " She walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. "In social studies, like wills and trusts and what happens to your stuff when you die. " Holt was very still. "Is that right? " he said. "Mrs.
Alvarez said if you die and you have a trust, the money goes where you put it in the trust, not automatically to your family. " She emerged from the refrigerator with an apple and bit into it. "Which I thought was weird because wouldn't you want it to go to your family? " "Usually," he said carefully. "Unless your family is bad. " She looked at him with those eyes. Claire's eyes sharp and unbothered and cutting straight to the center of things the way they always did. "Sometimes," he said.
She shrugged, apparently satisfied with that, and wandered toward her room. Then stopped in the hallway. "Dad," she said. "Yeah. " "Why is there a folder of financial documents on the table? " He looked at the table. He'd closed the laptop, but the legal pad was still out covered in his handwriting.
Names, amounts, arrows between entities, the three circled names at the top. "Work," he said. She looked at the legal pad, at him, back at the legal pad. "You don't have regular work that involves financial documents," she said. "I have other kinds of work. " She stared at him for another 3 seconds with the particular expression she wore when she was deciding whether to push or let it go.
She let it go. "Okay," she said, and went to her room. He exhaled. He pulled the legal pad closer, looked at the three names, looked at his notes from the morning, then wrote a fourth name beneath them slower this time. Eleanor Hadley and beneath that in smaller letters Margaret Claire Marlowe.