THW BILLIONAIRE WIFE DISAPPEARED

Chapter Four: What Clara Isn't Saying

Clara, I say the next morning, catching her by the copy room. Who was she? The last assistant.

I really don't know, Stephanie, "she says, looking up at me. It isn't annoyance on her face. It's closer to worry. Why's it matter?

I almost told her about the texts. I open my mouth, ready to just say it, get it out of my chest, and into the open air between us. Then I remember Kingsley telling me not to. Not yet. And I shut it again.

No reason, I say. Forget I asked.

She doesn't buy it. She doesn't push either, and somehow, that's worse.

Kingsley's in meetings most of the morning, and I don't get a chance to tell him about the second text until noon, when he comes out of his office and drops a folder on my desk without slowing down.

Got a minute, I ask.

Depends.

Whitmore. Sort of.

That's enough to make him stop walking. He glances toward his office, then back at me, and something in his face goes careful again, the same way it did yesterday.

My office, he says.

I follow him in. I shut the door myself this time.

Got another text last night, I tell him. Different number. It said to ask you about the last assistant. The one who found the Whitmore numbers before me.

He goes very still.

Show me.

I pull it up and hand it over. He reads it twice. His jaw goes tight.

Her name was Anna, he says. Quiet. Like the name costs him something to say out loud. She worked here about two years back.

What happened to her?

She found the same gap you found. Different numbers, same pattern. He hands the phone back to me, and he won't look at me now. She came to me with it. I told her I'd handle it.

And?

She didn't listen. She kept digging on her own. He rubs the back of his neck, that tell I already know by heart after only a few days. She quit two weeks later. She wouldn't say why. She wouldn't take my calls after that.

You think something happened to her.

I think somebody made her stop asking, he says. Flat, but there's something underneath it. Something close to guilt. I never found out how. She'd already left the city by the time I tried to reach her.

Something cold sits down low in my stomach. And you didn't think to mention any of this before you handed me the exact same file?

I didn't think it would move this fast, he says, and for the first time, he doesn't look like the man from the magazine covers. He looks rattled. I should have told you sooner. I'm sorry.

Sorry, it doesn't cover it, Kingsley.

No, he says. It doesn't. He doesn't try to argue that part. But trust me on this next bit. Stop digging into Whitmore yourself. Let me handle whoever's texting you.

Like you handled it with Anna?

The words are out before I can stop them, and I watch them land harder than I mean them to. He flinches, just barely, and for a second, I almost take it back.

Almost.

Fair, he says, after a moment. I got it wrong once. I'm trying not to get it wrong again.

I leave his office feeling worse than when I walked in. I sit at my desk and try to work, but I can't hold focus for more than ten minutes at a time. I keep circling back to a woman named Anna I've never met, who found the same four hundred thousand dollar hole and just disappeared out of the story completely.

Around three, Clara comes back. Quieter this time.

You asked about her this morning, she says.

Yeah.

I lied a little, she says. I know something. She glances at Kingsley's shut door and drops her voice. Anna used to talk to me. Before she left. She said she found something in a file that scared her enough to walk out on the spot.

What kind of something?

She never said exactly. But she said one thing I never forgot. Clara's voice drops even lower. She said it wasn't Kingsley she was scared of it.

My stomach turns over slow. Then who?

Clara opens her mouth to answer.

Her phone buzzes on the desk between us. Both our eyes drop to it at the same time. The screen's lit up, face up, easy enough for me to read from where I'm standing.

Careful what you tell the new one. Same as last time.

Clara goes white. She grabs the phone fast, snatching it off the desk like it burned her.

Not fast enough.

I've already seen it.