Chapter 7: Cease and Desist

The conference room at Halo Row had a table long enough for twenty people.

On Thursday afternoon, there were seven of us.

Hank sat at the head, with a lawyer on each side and a folder in front of him.

Devon sat halfway down on the left, in a black jacket, with his hands folded.

Lexi sat on the right with her chin up.

Maxine and I sat at the far end.

Maxine had called it a mediation.

Hank called it a courtesy.

"Thank you all for coming," he said, in his soft voice. "I'll make this brief."

He opened the folder and slid a page toward me.

"Miss Quinn. Our claim is simple. You had unsupervised access to Mr. Ransom's files for three years."

"That's right," I said.

"You took a work-in-progress and claimed it as yours after the fact."

"No."

"We have the shared drive logs."

"I have the originals," I said. "Dated in March, on three devices."

Hank smiled.

"Dates can be changed," he said. "Which is why we only need a simple statement."

The second lawyer pushed another sheet across the table.

It was one page, with a line at the bottom for my signature.

I read it.

It said the song "Gold Room" was written by Devon Ransom and Lexi Rotherhithe.

It said I had contributed nothing, and that I would never speak of it again.

"That's a nondisclosure agreement," I said.

"It's a favor to you," Hank said. "If you sign, we drop the claim, and your name stays out of the papers."

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