Chapter 19: The Offer

Keystone's president met us in the lobby himself.

He did not mention the gala.

He took us up to the top floor and shut the door of a conference room.

He laid three printed pages on the table.

"Fourteen pages, actually," he said. "These are the ones that matter."

The heading said SERVICING TRANSFER AND RELEASE.

It moved the home loans of nine thousand Tarrant Freight drivers from Keystone to a small lender I had never heard of.

"Whose lender is that?" I said.

"Its owner is the brother-in-law of the director you fired," the president said. "He owns Corliss Haulage too."

"What does the transfer cost?"

"A release fee of one point four million dollars, payable on signing.

"The payee is a company called Harlan Family Holdings."

Rafe leaned over the page.

"Who signed for Tarrant?"

The president turned the last sheet.

There was a signature at the bottom, in blue, under the title Chair of the Board.

It said Claire Madsen Harlan.

It was my name, and it was not mine.

The loops were right and the pressure was wrong.

"I didn't sign that," I said.

"I know you didn't," the president said.

"Dean signed the approval page himself, yesterday morning, before security walked him out.

"His login stayed live, and last night someone used it from an address in Kettering.

"They uploaded this with his approval already attached."

"Kettering," I said. "His mother's house."

"It would explain a great deal."

"He has six years of my signature on tax returns," I said. "He's good at copying it."

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