PART 5:

“Does he?” Jake had the expression of a man whose 7-year-old was accurately quoting him in circumstances he hadn’t anticipated. “He says a lot of things,” he said. Lily held out one arm, the one without the IV line, and Emma, after a second’s hesitation that Lily did not seem to notice, sat down beside her.

The child leaned against her shoulder and closed her eyes. Jake watched his daughter settle against Emma Lawson in a hospital waiting room and felt something happen in his chest that was not the grief he’d carried for 4 years and not the careful blankness he’d built around it. It was something else. Something quieter.

Something that felt strangely like a door left open that he hadn’t known was closed. 2 weeks passed. Jake drove to Richmond on a Tuesday to return a set of tools he’d borrowed from a supplier whose warehouse was near Emma’s office building. He had not planned to contact her. He was walking back to his truck when his phone buzzed.

A message from an unsaved number. “I’m looking at the parking garage across from my building and I’m fairly sure I can see Gerald.” He looked up. He couldn’t see the building from where he was. He texted back, “How do you know it’s Gerald?” Her reply was immediate. “Cracked left mirror and a tailgate held together by optimism.

” He was still standing in the parking structure, smiling at his phone when she appeared at the far end of the row in a coat and scarf holding a paper bag. “I had my assistant get sandwiches,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve eaten.” “I haven’t.” “Then this works out.” They sat on the open-air third level of the garage with the city spread below them and ate sandwiches that had been assembled by someone who took sandwiches more seriously than most people took professional decisions.

They talked about Lily’s recovery, which was full and complete. They talked about a conversation Jake had with Martin Lawson, who had apparently called to say that the cruiser had run fine for 2 weeks straight and that he was expecting Jake to come back in the spring when the striped bass started running. “He doesn’t invite people fishing,” Emma said.

Her voice was careful. “He invited me.” “I know.” She was looking at the city. Jake was looking at her. “Emma, don’t,” she said. But it was different from the night by the lake, softer, less certain of itself. “I wasn’t going to say anything difficult,” Jake said. “What were you going to say?” “That I’ve thought about you every day since Sunday.

And that I’m aware that this is inconvenient and makes no logical sense and that we don’t fit together in any category that people have names for.” He paused. “And that none of that changes it.” Emma looked at him. “Lily asked about you four times in the past 2 weeks,” Jake added.

“That’s not a fair thing to include.” “No,” he agreed. “But it’s true.” She looked back at the city for a long time. Jake waited. “I don’t know how to do this,” Emma said finally. “I don’t either,” Jake said. “I haven’t in a long time.” She turned to look at him directly. “What if I’m very bad at it?” “Then we’ll figure it out.

” “What if I get afraid and build walls?” “Then I’ll knock on them until you open up.” He said it lightly but meant it entirely. Emma looked at him for another moment. Then she said, “Jake.” “Yeah.” “I’ve been thinking about you every day since Sunday, too.” It arrived on a Monday. Emma had been working on the acquisition for 4 months.

Lawson Digital was positioned to absorb a mid-size cybersecurity firm called Praxis Technologies, which would give Emma’s company a set of proprietary encryption tools that no competitor currently possessed. The deal was worth approximately $230 million and had been in the quiet phase of due diligence for 6 weeks.

The message came through an anonymous route to her company’s general contact portal and it would have been filtered as spam except that it contained the correct internal code for the acquisition. A code that existed in exactly 11 documents, all stored in secured systems. Someone inside had passed information. The message itself was brief.

Walk away from Praxis. You won’t like what happens if you don’t. Emma read it twice. She forwarded it to her head of security. She did not, initially, tell Jake. She told him 4 days later when a second message arrived. They were at her apartment, a habit that had developed gradually and without formal announcement, the way real habits do.

She showed him her phone. He read both messages without comment. Then he set the phone down on the counter and looked at her. “You have to tell the police,” he said. “My security team is handling it. Your security team isn’t the police. In situations like this, involving law enforcement too early can” Emma She stopped.

“Someone with access to your internal documents is threatening you. That’s not a negotiation to manage. That’s a crime.” Emma was quiet. She knew he was right. She also knew and was aware that knowing this did not make it wise that stepping back from the Praxis acquisition would remove the pressure. And that the quiet, efficient part of her mind had already run that calculation.

“I’m not walking away from the deal,” she said. “I didn’t say you should,” Jake said. “I said tell the police.” She did. The next morning, she spoke with a detective in Richmond’s financial crimes unit. They opened a case. Her security team began cross-referencing access logs against the 11 documents. Jake drove to Richmond that Friday and took Lily with him under the pretense of a city adventure that involved the Natural History Museum and a particular pasta place Lily had been requesting for 3 weeks.

While Lily asked the museum’s docent extremely detailed questions about prehistoric fish, Jake stood by the window and thought about the weight of a threat that hadn’t materialized yet and about the particular helplessness of being concerned about someone who had spent 10 years being competent in the face of things that should have broken her.

The call came on a Wednesday afternoon. Emma had a meeting with the majority shareholder of Praxis Technologies, a man named Victor Aldrich, who had quietly opposed the acquisition from its earliest stages and who had agreed, through intermediaries, to a direct conversation. Emma’s security team had run Aldrich’s background.

He was aggressive in negotiations but had no criminal record and no history of threats. The meeting seemed straightforward. She didn’t tell Jake about it. She told herself this was because she didn’t want to worry him unnecessarily. She was aware, on some level, that this was not the only reason. The location was an office building on Ferro Street that Aldrich’s firm was currently renovating a mid-sized commercial space, third floor, half the interior stripped to studs and bare concrete.

Aldrich had chosen it, he said, for privacy. The acquisition was market sensitive. Emma arrived with one member of her security team, a man named Paul Reeves, who waited in the hall. Aldrich was already inside. He was shorter than Emma had expected, in his 50s, with the careful grooming of a man who understood presentation.

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