Chapter 18: The Settlement

The settlement lay on the glass table in a leather folder with the Calder Media crest on it.

I did not open it.

Seven people sat on the other side of that table.

It was a conference room above Harbor Arena, with a view of the empty ice.

The owner sat at the head in his camel coat.

Beside him sat Brady's agent, the team's lawyer, and four board members.

The board members looked as though they had been pulled out of bed.

Brady was not there.

Soren stood behind my chair with his arms folded and his bandaged hand tucked under one elbow.

He had not said a word since the truck.

"Miss Ostrowski," the owner said. "You've read the offer."

"I read the cover."

"It's generous. You keep the money your channel earned. You remove the recording."

He turned a page toward me.

"You sign a statement that you were distressed, and that the video was posted in a moment of confusion."

"No."

"There is also a confidentiality clause."

"No."

He smiled, patient.

"May I ask what you do want?"

I pushed the folder, unopened, to the middle of the table.

"I want it in front of these people," I said. "All of it."

I had practiced it in the van for twenty minutes, and it still came out too fast.

"The content agreement is void."

I did not look at my notes.

"Calder Media paid my best friend twenty percent of my sponsors to sign it as the team's agent, and let me think she was only a witness."

Nobody moved.

"You didn't know that," I said to the board. "I can see that you didn't."

A woman at the far end looked sharply at the owner.

"You also sold the channel three days after the opener," I said.

"So the suit you filed against me is about a channel you gave away."

The team's lawyer opened his mouth.

"Miss Ostrowski's counsel in Marquette sent a letter to your office at eight this morning," Soren said quietly behind me.

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