Ten Years to Win Her, Two Weeks to Leave Her novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Nothing in Her Hands

Lydia felt the chair beside her take his weight, and her knees nearly gave out.

She had not looked at him.

She was afraid that if she did, she would stop being able to stand.

"Mr. Ridley," said the chair of the Board, a gray-haired woman with a pen in her hand. "You aren't on this agenda."

"No, ma'am."

"Then why are you here?"

"To answer the question Dr. Crewe just raised," Nolan said. "He says the notebooks are her word. They aren't. They're mine."

He took the black notebook off the table and opened it to a page near the back.

"Dr. Crewe, you presented the filter in this city three hours ago. What is the threshold in line six of this entry?"

Leland smiled.

"I'm not going to quiz myself in front of the Board over a notebook I haven't had time to read."

"Zero point three seven," Nolan said. "It was on your slide. You read it off. You didn't know why."

Leland's smile stayed where it was.

It was the only part of him that did.

The chair of the Board looked down the table at Harold.

"Director, I think this goes to a review. An outside audit of the Deep Field authorship, before anything is released under one name. Unless somebody objects."

Nobody did.

Harold stood up without a word, and his chair scraped.

He walked out past Lydia without turning his head, and Russell went after him.

At the door Russell looked back once, at his brother, and then he was gone.

That was all.

No scene, no shouting.

After ten years of that building, it was almost nothing.

Lydia held onto the back of her chair until the Board had filed out.

Then she walked into the stairwell, because it was the nearest place with a door, and she sat down on the cold concrete step with her coat around her knees.

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