Chapter 11

BUZZZZZZZ

The buzzer sounded like it was tearing through a dream.

Ezra jolted awake, half dressed, having passed out on the couch. For a moment he lay there in the dark, uncertain if it had come from inside him or out. Then it came again, in short repeating bursts, giving him no space to ignore it.

He got up, crossed the room and pressed the intercom.

"Yeah?"

It's Arlo

He glanced at the clock. 12:07 a.m.

"What are you doing here?"

I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important

His voice was hushed, thick with fear. Ezra pressed the buzzer without another word.

By the time he opened the door, Arlo was already at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, a sharpness in his eyes that hadn't been there before. He stumbled in, panting a greeting.

Ezra shut the door behind him.

"Well?" asked Ezra, not quite awake yet.

Arlo didn't answer right away. He reached into his coat and pulled out an old mini cassette tape.

"My PI left this at a dead drop tonight. It had a note telling me to bring it to you immediately."

His hands were jittery. He fumbled into his other pocket and pulled out a player.

"Can't believe I still had this in the glove box," he said, his breath finally catching up to him. "Needs batteries."

Ezra nodded and stepped into the kitchen, fishing two AAAs from his trash heap of a junk drawer.

Arlo popped the tape in. "I haven't listened to it yet."

He slid the compartment closed, put in the batteries, and hit play.

A hiss, then the start of a muffled conversation. The first voice to speak was clearly Millburn.

…we'll need to wind it down. With Bethany gone, we've lost our in at the department.

The second voice was lower, unfamiliar.

What about the fallout?

We've got Calloway right where we want him. He's been walking himself in deeper with every click. He won't know what hit him.

Arlo hit stop, and they stared silently at each other.

Ezra turned and walked back to the couch, then sat hard, like something had buckled inside him.

Arlo stayed standing, unsure what to do with his body.

"She was part of it," Ezra said, barely above a whisper.

Arlo didn't answer, he was still looking at the tape deck, almost unable to believe what he'd heard.

Ezra let out a sharp breath through his nose. He leaned forward, elbows digging into his thighs.

"How…" His voice trailed off.

Arlo walked slowly toward the couch but didn't sit, still giving Ezra space.

"I've seen this before," he said. "Good people pulled into bad systems."

Ezra stood too quickly, steadied himself against the sofa.

"Good people?" he asked, with a look of incredulity on his face. "I need to know more."

Arlo hit play, and the tape continued. The conversation shifted to ranking country club wives by centiliters of saline before the recording cut off, leaving just the analog background of the tape.

Ezra turned, still breathing shallow, and said, "How'd your guy even get that?"

"I don't ask questions I don't want answers to," Arlo replied.

Ezra stepped into the kitchen, ran cold water into a glass and drank half of it in one gulp. He stood by the sink, staring at the backsplash.

"I think… I might have access to something," he said slowly. "When Bethany died, there was all this paperwork. The estate, the insurance, the credentials. I remember logging in once to sort through things, just the basics, bank info, contacts." He looked up. "She kept a cloud drive full of stuff I never looked through."

Arlo gave a single nod, almost to himself. "Is it worth checking?"

Ezra didn't answer, he just walked over to the kitchen counter and pulled his laptop out of his satchel.

"Here," he said, handing it to Arlo before walking over to his desk in the corner.

Folder by folder, they sifted through Bethany's cloud storage. Among the stockpiles of photo albums and years worth of their tax returns were PDFs of email threads, a spreadsheet linking policyholders to dummy corporations, real estate transactions, bank routing numbers.

One email stood out, Bethany to someone he didn't know with an ML&P address: I can't do this anymore. I want out. It hit Ezra like a blow to the ribs.

He sat back, eyes glassy. "She kept everything," he said quietly.

Arlo nodded, eyes still scanning his screen. "They killed her for trying to leave."

The alarm in his bedroom began to screech, blinking 6:00 AM. For hours now, Ezra's only movements were from the desk, to the kitchen for coffee, to the balcony to smoke, and back to the desk, like a highly stimulated rat running its maze in repetition.

Arlo, who had moved even less, sat slouched in the armchair, shoes off, tie loosened and draped around his neck like a noose.

"Dammit, I have to get into the office," said Ezra.

"You're not actually going in there, are you?"

Ezra didn't answer right away. He merely scrambled around, changing his clothes, giving himself a dry shave, and desperately trying not to let his swirling thoughts derail his body's action.

"What choice do I have?" he said, pulling a thumb drive out of his desk drawer. "I can't let them know that I know."

"They'll eat you alive."

"Maybe," Ezra said, plugging the drive in and typing a few prompts, "but maybe they still need more from me first."

Once the download was complete, he slipped the drive into his coat pocket and looked around the room, at the drained coffee mugs, the sleepless lawyer, the wreckage of truth scattered everywhere.

Then he picked up his satchel and headed for the door.

"Don't worry about locking up behind you."

The drive into the office was nothing short of tortuous. With his body on autopilot, his mind was free to wander, whether to places he wanted or desperately wanted to avoid. Flashes of Bethany echoed through his mind. He saw her standing there at their wedding, nearly brought to tears over her beauty. How could he have been so blind. The countless nights, alone together in bed. Her skin, her smell, the precise shape of her breasts as they bounced on top of him. The things he'd buried in the grief.

The hope he had felt in a future worth living, the promises they'd made to each other, all unfulfilled and now appearing as mere lies. Cover for an ambition that he never saw inside of her. Was it simply greed? Hadn't they had enough without this? The stories he began telling himself, justifications for her behavior, but no matter how hard he tried, the knife of her betrayal kept twisting inside of him.

The badge scanner took a second too long to register. Ezra felt the delay like a hand on his chest. He looked up. The guard behind the desk offered a casual shrug.

"It's been glitchy all morning," he said.

The elevator doors yawned open like a trap. Inside, he gripped the rail to steady himself. His legs were numb, his arms weak, his mind looping fragments: the tape, the email, the sound of Bethany's voice saying I want out. A woman from marketing stepped in on seven. She said his name and smiled like nothing was wrong. He tried to mirror it, but felt the muscles in his face revolt.

He stopped at the kitchenette, poured himself a coffee with hands that shook. The bottom of the pot clattered against the burner as he tried to return the pot. He looked up, at one of the conference rooms. Someone inside met his gaze for a fraction of a second before walking over and drawing the blinds.

The walk to his desk was a tunnel. Voices blurred together. Conversations cut off as he passed. Each head that turned felt like a trigger being squeezed. No one moved to stop him, but that was almost worse. He wanted a fight. He wanted a fire alarm to pull. Anything but this waiting.

He dropped into his chair like a flicked off switch. Fingers leaden, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the thumb drive. His breath came shallow. His fingers rubbed the small piece of plastic, metal, and silicone. Examining this tiny artifact filled to the brim with bytes of brutality. His thoughts were a blur, a static wash. He didn't know what he was about to do. Not consciously, at least. There was no plan, no step-by-step. Just a gut instinct screaming to move, to do something. He slid the drive into the port.

He opened the payout queue and sorted by pending disbursements. For each, he replaced the bank account numbers with ones from Bethany's files, the offshore savings she'd tucked away.

Next, he dragged PDFs from the thumb drive and dropped them into random active cases. Threads of damning emails, spreadsheets mapping policyholders to shell corporations. He marked each for review and clicked submit. One after another.

His phone lit up. Then again. And again.

He half ran down to the receptionist.

"Mr. Calloway?" she asked, visibly disturbed by the look of mania on his face.

"I need you to hold my calls, please."

"Certainly," she replied and cleared her throat.

Back at his desk, and he watched as the email ticker at the corner of his window jumped from 9 to 17. Then 36. 58. 74. 99+.

One file after another, drag, drop, review, submit.

The phone rang again. He was about to scream with rage down the hallway, but then he saw the extension.

It was Millburn.