Chapter 11: The Board

"What proof?" I said.

"He didn't say." Colm was already out of bed, pulling on his shirt from the floor. "He didn't have to. He's got a building full of cameras."

I sat up with the sheet around me.

The private elevator. The little black dome in the ceiling.

Me in the wig, looking at him.

"He's got Jane," I said.

Colm stopped buttoning.

"He doesn't know it's you."

"Not yet."

I reached for my phone on the nightstand and called Dell.

She picked up on the first ring, shouting over a mixer.

"Where are you? Are you dead?"

"I need every pay stub you can get me by eight thirty," I said. "Yours. Housekeeping. The bellmen. As many as people will hand over."

The mixer went off.

"Why?"

"Because the board's meeting at nine, and I'm going to it."

There was a pause.

"You slept with him," Dell said.

"Dell."

"You slept with him. I can hear it. You've got your nice voice on."

"Pay stubs, Del."

"I'm getting them. I'm so proud of you. I'm getting them."

The boardroom is on the mezzanine, across from Colm's office.

Long table. Portraits of three dead Kinsellas on the wall.

Nine directors sat around it. The board chair was at the head, seventy-something, with a hearing aid and a face like a closed bank.

Ryland stood at a screen at the far end in a fresh suit.

I didn't go in with Colm.

I waited outside the door in the wig and glasses with a folder in my arms, the way Jane would.

The door didn't close all the way.

"He's family," Ryland was saying. "But the board has a right to know."

He clicked.

I could see the screen through the gap.

The inside of the private elevator, from the ceiling. One oh four this morning.

Colm with his hands in his coat pockets.

A woman in a beige raincoat, a brown bob and round glasses, looking up at him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Wrong Room: Sleeping With My Fiancé's Uncle from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.