Chapter 20: The Vote

Gus carried the stool into the boardroom himself.

A man at the door held up a hand.

"Visitors are not permitted," he said.

"It's a witness," said Gus.

The man looked at the stool, and then at Lorne, and then at me.

He let us through.

The boardroom was on the ninth floor, with a long walnut table and seven chairs on one side.

Six of them held people in grey suits.

The seventh held Margaret VanHoesen, with her gold key at her collar and her coat folded on her knee.

Her lawyer sat behind her, the one with the leather folder.

Gus put the stool at the foot of the table and sat on the floor next to it.

"For the record," said a board member at the far end, "who is the stool?"

"A witness," I said. "From the stream room. It heard the first fifty thousand dollars."

Somebody coughed into a sleeve.

The wall clock above the door said 9:00.

"Let's begin," said Margaret. "I'll be brief."

She was brief.

She said the studio was losing money.

She said the game was a distraction.

She said her buyer's offer was the only one on the table, and the board had a duty to take it.

She did not look at the screen on the wall.

It showed the player count, live, in white numbers.

612,044.

Under it was the letter, with its tally.

233,901 HOLDS.

"The numbers are a stunt," said Margaret.

"They come from a viral clip and a marriage that began as a contract."

"It began as a grab," I said.

"Mrs. Roark, you're not a member of this board."

"No. I'm a witness's friend."

"Let her speak," said the board member at the far end.

I stood up, with my hands in my hoodie pockets so they wouldn't shake.

"Three things," I said. "Then I'll sit down."

"Go ahead."

"One. The buyer's company is called Skeleton Key Capital."

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