Chapter 2 - WHAT MY HUSBAND GAVE HER
Nolan's face stayed pale.
I waited.
He reached for the phone on the counter, then stopped before touching it.
“Marissa told me there might be a problem before you were suspended.”
For one second, I thought I had misunderstood him.
“How long before?”
His eyes dropped.
“Seventeen days.”
I actually stepped backward.
“Seventeen days?”
“She didn't say there was missing money.”
“What did she say?”
“That compliance had noticed irregularities around your approvals.”
I stared at him.
“And you didn't tell me?”
“She told me she wasn't supposed to tell anyone.”
I laughed once, but there was nothing funny in it.
“So you protected her confidentiality from your wife.”
“Tessa, I thought she was protecting you.”
“By secretly discussing an investigation into me?”
“She said if she went through official channels too soon, somebody might make you the scapegoat.”
The word landed between us.
Scapegoat.
Exactly what I now believed I had become.
I moved closer.
“What did she ask you for?”
Nolan's silence gave me the answer before his mouth did.
Something.
He had given her something.
“Nolan.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“She asked whether you still had your old laptop.”
My stomach dropped.
“What old laptop?”
“The silver one. The one you used before you bought the new one last year.”
I knew exactly which one he meant.
It wasn't a Summit computer.
It was mine.
But during the pandemic I had occasionally used it to access Summit remotely.
I had kept tax files on it.
Old spreadsheets.
Scanned documents.
Copies of our mortgage paperwork.
Even a folder containing old company authorization forms I had downloaded while working from home.
“You gave Marissa my laptop?”
“She said she wanted to check whether your credentials had been compromised.”
My voice came out frighteningly calm.
“You gave another Summit employee my personal computer without asking me.”
“For one night.”
“One night is enough.”
“I know that now.”
“No, Nolan. You knew it then.”
He flinched.
I hated that part of me still cared that I had hurt him.
I hated it almost as much as I hated how scared I suddenly was.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Before my suspension.”
“Yes.”
“Before the company supposedly knew there was enough evidence to accuse me.”
“Yes.”
I walked to the kitchen table and sat down because my knees no longer felt dependable.
“What else?”
He didn't answer.
I looked up.
“What else did you give her?”
“She asked about your planner.”
The red one.
The memory hit me immediately.
I carried a red leather planner because I still liked writing things down during meetings.
Dates.
Vendor numbers.
Questions to follow up on.
Things I didn't want disappearing inside some digital task list.
My throat tightened.
“You took pictures of it.”
Nolan nodded.
“Only a few pages.”
“Which pages?”
“I don't remember.”
“Try.”
“She gave me dates.”
My skin went cold.
“May fourteenth?”
His head lifted.
That was enough.
I stood.
“You photographed May fourteenth.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She said there had been a system irregularity that day.”
“And you believed her.”
“She was your best friend.”
“So were you.”
That hurt him.
I saw it.
But I didn't take it back.
Nolan sank into a chair.
“There is something else.”
Of course there was.
“There always is when someone starts with that sentence.”
He stared at the coffee mug his hands had been wrapped around that morning.
“Mom loaned me money last year.”
I went completely still.
“How much?”
“Sixty-eight thousand.”
I almost smiled from shock.
“You borrowed sixty-eight thousand dollars from Judith without telling me?”
“My firm lost two contracts within six weeks.”
Nolan worked with a small commercial design company. I knew business had been slow.
I had not known it had been that slow.
“I thought it would recover.”
“So instead of telling your wife we had a financial problem, you borrowed money from your mother.”
“Yes.”
“And Marissa knew.”
He swallowed.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“When she started asking whether there was anything investigators could use to make it look like you needed money, I told her.”
My eyes burned.
“You handed her a motive.”
“I thought I was helping her defend you.”
“And did she ask for proof?”
He didn't answer.
I closed my eyes.
“Please tell me you did not give her paperwork.”
“She asked for the loan agreement.”
I turned away.
For several seconds I couldn't look at him.
My husband had not stolen $7.8 million.
At least I didn't believe he had.
But he had handed my best friend my private computer, pages from my planner, and evidence of a hidden household debt.
If someone wanted to build a criminal story around me, Nolan had given them the pieces.
“I want your messages with her.”
He reached for his phone.
“I deleted some.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“Because after you came home yesterday, I started realizing how bad everything looked. I panicked.”
“Deleted messages always look better.”
“I know.”
“No, apparently you don't.”
He unlocked the phone and put it on the table.
“There may still be copies on my tablet.”
Ten minutes later, we were sitting in the living room with Nolan's tablet between us.
Some messages had synchronized before he deleted them.
Not all.
Enough.
Three weeks earlier, Marissa had written:
Did she keep the red planner from Q2?
Nolan:
Yes. Why?
Marissa:
I need May 14. Maybe May 22 too. Don't tell her yet. If I'm wrong, you'll scare her for nothing.
Then Nolan had sent four photographs.
My planner.
My handwriting.
My notes.
My life.
One message made my chest tighten.
Marissa:
Does Tessa know about the loan from Judith?
Nolan:
No.
Marissa:
Then don't bring it up yet.
I looked at Nolan.
“She wasn't protecting me.”
His face crumpled.
“I know.”
“No. She was collecting things.”
The laptop was in the hall closet.
Nolan brought it to me.
I opened it at the kitchen table.
The battery was nearly dead, so we plugged it in.
I hadn't used the computer in almost a year.
Yet the recent-files menu showed activity from three weeks earlier.
PDF exports.
Scanned images.
A folder with no name.
I opened it.
There were copies of my old Summit authorization forms.
Three examples of my electronic signature.
A scan of Nolan's loan agreement with Judith.
Then I saw a file labeled MAY14_RP.
RP.
Red planner.
I opened it.
The page appeared exactly as I remembered it.
Three budget notes.
A reminder to call procurement.
Then, halfway down:
4187 — routing looks familiar. Check against 6620.
I leaned closer.
“That’s it.”
“What?”
“The thing I remembered in the interview.”
Vendor 4187.
I had noticed its banking information looked familiar.
That was what had bothered me.
But something else bothered me more.
I checked the file information.
The scan had been created thirty-two days ago.
Nolan had given Marissa the planner photographs twenty-two days ago.
I looked at him.
“You didn't make this scan.”
“No.”
“It existed ten days before you ever photographed the page.”
His face changed.
“Tessa…”
“She already had access to my planner.”
At work.
Inside my office.
Before she ever came to you.
I enlarged the bottom corner of the scanned image.
A thin strip of metadata had been preserved by whatever office scanner created it.
Device.
Department.
User.
Nolan leaned over my shoulder.
Neither of us spoke.
The scanner belonged to Summit MedTech.
Vendor Compliance.
User:
MKEENE.
Marissa.
But beneath the image was one more handwritten line.
Not in my handwriting.
I had never seen it before.
Four words.
If T sees 4187, we're done.
I stared at the word we're.
Not I'm.
We're.
May you like
Marissa hadn't just been preparing to destroy me.
She had been protecting someone else.
