Part 9:
I am asking you to work inside a legal process with my legal team, with my security team, and with pay. Pay? Yes. How much? Your base would be the salary of an internal compliance associate. That is $84,000 annualized. I am offering you a 6-month contract to start with the option to extend and a signing bonus to compensate for the wrongful termination, which we will characterize as a settlement.
The settlement is $60,000. It would be paid out this week. Ryan stared at her. $60,000? This week? You’re offering me $60,000? I am offering you what my legal team estimated a wrongful termination suit against Regis Hollister would cost me to settle out of court minus the legal fees on both sides. It is not generosity, Ryan.
It is arithmetic. Is everything arithmetic with you? She thought about it. Most things, she said. Some things aren’t. Which things aren’t? She looked at him for a second. Then she looked away, out of the window at the laundromat. I will have to get back to you on that one. He sat with the coffee in his hand and with the sheet of numbers between them and with the quiet of the SUV around him and he thought about Emma and about the boots and about the $2 in his wallet and about Carl Voss’s lanyard and about Martin Delaney not being able to
look at him. “If I say yes,” he said. “Yes.” “I’m not doing this for the money.” “I don’t believe you, but go on.” “I’m doing it because that man tried to put this on me. He tried to put it on me because he thought I’d take it. He thought I was the kind of person nobody would miss and I want him to look at me when it comes apart.
” “That is a perfectly acceptable reason.” “Okay?” “Okay.” “Okay?” “I’ll do it.” She didn’t smile. She nodded once, sharply, like a business transaction had been concluded. “Thank you, Ryan.” “When do we start?” “Now, if you can. I would like you to come with me to my team’s operation site. It is about 40 minutes from here.
You will sign a contract, you will sign a non-disclosure and then we will start work. I will have you home by 5:00. You can pick up your daughter.” “You know about the 5:00 pick up?” “I know a number of things about you, Ryan. I had a briefing last night.” “That’s unsettling.” “I imagine it is. I’m sorry.” “No, you’re not.” She almost smiled.
“I am a little sorry, not enough to have done it differently.” “Fair.” She knocked once on the partition between the backseat and the front. The driver turned the key. The SUV’s engine came to life very quietly, almost smoothly, the way a thing comes to life that has been well made by people who were paid well to make it.
“Ryan.” “Yeah.” “One more thing before we drive.” “Okay.” “When you see Carl Voss next and you will see him again, you will not say anything to him. You will not look at him with anything on your face. You will not threaten him. You will not warn him. You will let him believe he has won for as long as I ask you to.
Can you do that? He thought about the lanyard. He thought about you’re mistaken. He thought about Martin Delaney’s eyes when he said, “It’s not up to me.” “Yeah,” he said, “I can do that.” Good. Because I’m going to ask you to do it for several weeks. Okay. And Ryan, “Yeah.” I will pay you back the $40. Don’t worry about it.
I am going to. Okay. She took a single crisp bill out of a small wallet she had in her coat pocket and handed it to him. It was a hundred. I said 40. I know, the rest is interest. Celeste, take it, Ryan, or I will be annoyed. He took it. He folded it and put it in his wallet next to the $2 that were still in there.
He could feel the weight of it, which was ridiculous, because a hundred-dollar bill weighed the same as a one-dollar bill, but he could feel it. The SUV pulled away from the curb. The other three SUVs pulled out behind it in formation. They moved down Birch Street in a slow black line, and the old man with the small brown dog who was out for his morning walk stopped on the sidewalk and watched them go by with his mouth slightly open.
Ryan sat in the back and watched his own street slide past the tinted window. He saw the laundromat. He saw the corner where Rosa had met Emma an hour ago. He saw the little handwritten sign on the door of the pharmacy that said, “Back in 15 minutes,” and had said back in 15 minutes for as long as Ryan had lived in that neighborhood.
“Where are we going, exactly?” he said. A building my company owns outside of Montpelier. It is off the books. Very few people at Regis Hollister know it exists. Off the books? Not illegally, just not advertised. Got it. She was watching him. He could feel it. Ryan. Yeah. You’re not afraid. I’m a little afraid.
You don’t look afraid. I’ve been very afraid for about 24 hours straight. I think I ran out this morning. That happens. Does it happen to you? Not for a long time. When I was younger. Not for a long time now. He looked at her then and he saw something pass across her face that was not the face of a billionaire or a CEO or a woman in a charcoal coat in the back of an armored SUV.
It was the face of a person. Briefly. And then it was gone. And the face of the woman who ran the 18,000 employee company was back. And she was looking out the window at the hills. “Can I ask you something?” he said. Yes. Why the bus stop? I told you it was half a mile from the facility. No, I mean you have four SUVs.
