Chapter 5: The List

I woke up alone in the bed with my cheek on a warm dent in the pillow.

The shower was running down the hall.

The bathroom down the hall was shared with the laundromat's back office.

He had told me it took ten minutes to get hot water.

I sat up and held the sheet to my chest.

The black phone lay on the card table where it had been all night.

I looked at the door.

I looked at the phone.

Then I got out of bed, wrapped in the sheet, and picked it up.

It had no passcode.

A man with that much money and a phone with no passcode is a man who has never imagined anyone going through his things.

I opened the thread with Vivian.

It was long.

The top message was from three weeks ago.

"Glenn: I'm going in under my mother's name. Sam Doyle. Night cleaning crew, sixth floor. Don't call me Glenn at the office."

"Vivian: Don't get a splinter. Find the leak."

Further down, a week old, was a list.

"1. Colin Fawcett, VP Sales. Smart, greedy, board father."

"2. Head of procurement. Quiet, in debt."

"3. Jean Marrin, executive assistant to the COO. Her badge pulled the Delmar and Ardent files in August."

Under it, last night at 11:48 p.m.: "Vivian: Three names left. Which one tonight?"

And his reply, sent at 11:50 while I slept: "Not tonight."

I stood very still.

I read my own name twice, and my chest went hollow and then hot.

So that was what he had been doing on the sixth floor at night with his mop, beside my desk.

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