Forty Days To Testify

Cold Reception

"Seven o'clock," Kane had said. "Roz will have your desk ready."

That was it. He walked me down two flights of stairs, held the side door, and said nothing else. Not how he knew my name. Not what he planned to do about it.

I'd stood in the parking lot at four in the morning with my phone full of ledger photos and my real name sitting in the air like smoke.

Now it was seven-oh-five, and nobody had arrested me.

"Documents," I said. "Three years of vendor invoices, please."

The man behind the front office desk wore a quarter-zip and a smile that didn't reach anything. "Those are with accounting."

"Great. Where's accounting?"

"Off site."

"Where off site?"

"I'd have to check."

"Would you like me to wait?"

"It could take a while."

"I bill by the hour," I said. "I'm very patient."

He picked up a stapler and put it down. "Requests go through Mr. Reilly."

"Of course they do."

I wrote *Reilly* on my legal pad and underlined it twice. It gave my hand something to do.

The second request went the same way. So did the third. By nine, I had a desk the size of a cafeteria tray, a chair with one short leg, and a stack of paper that looked like a lot until you read it.

Phone bills. Parking permits. A fifteen-page menu from the concession stand.

"Is this a joke?" I asked the empty office.

The empty office declined to answer.

The locker room hallway was worse.

I needed the equipment logs, so I walked past the lockers with my clipboard held high like a shield. Twenty-some men in various stages of undressed turned their heads at once. Nobody said a word. A skate blade scraped the floor.

"Morning," I said.

Silence.

"I'm Gia Ross. I'm with the league. I'll be around a few weeks."

A huge defenseman looked at my blazer, then at my shoes, then at his friend. Neither said anything. The friend picked up a roll of tape and began winding it around his stick with great focus.

"Okay," I said brightly. "This is going well."

"Don't mind them."

The voice came from my left, warm and a little out of breath. A kid stood there holding a goalie mask under one arm, hair sticking up like he'd slept on it wrong. He couldn't have been more than twenty.

"They stare at everybody new," he said. "Last year they stared at a plumber for ten minutes. He left."

"Did he fix the pipe?"

"He did not."

I laughed. It surprised me. It came out cracked and rusty, like a door that hadn't been opened.

"Teddy Park." He stuck out a gloved hand, realized the glove was wet, and pulled it off to try again. "Goalie. Number thirty-one. You're the money lady."

"Auditor."

"Money lady is more fun."

"Gia." I shook his hand. "Gia Ross."

It still tasted like a borrowed coat. He didn't notice.

"You eaten yet?" he asked.

"I had a coffee."

"That's not eating. Come on. Roz keeps granola bars in the bottom drawer and she pretends she doesn't."

"I should work."

"Everybody works. Nobody works on an empty stomach." He was already walking backward down the hall, grinning. "Also, if you sit with me, they'll stop staring. I'm very popular."

"Are you?"

"No," Teddy admitted. "But I'm loud."

I followed him. I told myself it was research.

He sat me on an overturned bucket in the equipment room and talked for fifteen minutes straight. His mom mailed him cookies. His roommate snored. The Zamboni driver was named Gus and had once been hit by a puck in the stomach and said thank you.

"Why'd you say thank you?" I asked.

"Gus says it was the most attention he'd had all year."

Something in my chest went tight.

He hadn't asked where I was from. He hadn't asked about family. He just handed me a granola bar and shoved over to make room on the bench, like I was already someone who belonged there.

"You okay?" Teddy asked.

"Allergies."

"To what?"

"Kindness," I said, and then wished I hadn't.

He laughed like I'd made a joke. I let him.

At noon, I got the maintenance file.

Not from accounting. From a gray metal cabinet in the corner of the equipment room, which Teddy swore nobody locked because "it's just old stuff."

I opened it and read one line three times.

*Equipment maintenance. $4,000,000.*

"Teddy."

"Yeah?"

"How old are your skates?"

He lifted a foot. The blade was held to the boot with black tape. "Three seasons. Maybe four."

"And your pads?"

"Roz restitches them herself. She says new ones are for people with no character."

"Has anyone bought new gear this year?"

"No." He frowned. "Why?"

"No reason."

Four million dollars. For a team that taped its skates together.

I flipped pages. The invoices were numbered. Every single one, in order, no gaps. Same vendor name, different spellings, same P.O. box. The totals landed on round numbers. No one pays round numbers. Real life is full of nineteen-ninety-fives and stray tax.

"Teddy, I'm going to need a minute."

"Sure. I'll guard the granola."

I took the folder to the empty desk in the corner and spread it flat.

Four million wasn't a mistake. Mistakes are lazy. They show up in different handwriting, with typos, with receipts that don't match. This was tidy where tidy shouldn't be and missing where missing should hurt. Someone had left holes in exactly the places I'd have looked.

"Find something?"

I didn't jump. I'd had practice.

Kane Reilly stood in the doorway with his arms folded and his shoulder against the frame. In daylight he was somehow bigger. A gray henley, sleeves pushed up. Forearms like fence posts.

Teddy straightened like a kid caught with a cookie. "Hey, Captain."

"Teddy. Ice."

"I'm on break."

"Ice."

Teddy grabbed his mask and went, throwing me a look over his shoulder that said *good luck*.

The door swung shut. The room got smaller.

"You're asking for a lot of paper," Kane said.

"It's an audit."

"I've been audited."

"And?"

"It took less paper."

"Then you should have hired better people."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth and didn't quite become a smile. He walked in, slow, and stopped on the other side of the desk. Not close. Close enough that I could smell cedar.

"Requests go through me," he said.

"So I've been told. By everyone. Several times."

"Then you know how it works."

"I know I filed three requests this morning and got a cafeteria menu."

"It's a good menu."

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

"I don't know." He looked at the folder under my hand. Then at me. "Is it working?"

My pulse did something stupid. I picked up my pen.

"I need the vendor files, Mr. Reilly."

"Kane."

"I need the vendor files, Mr. Reilly."

He took that in. He didn't push. That was the maddening part. He treated me like a leak in a ceiling, not an enemy. Something to be patched, watched, kept dry.

"You'll get what you get," he said. "When you get it."

"That isn't a schedule."

"No." He tapped the corner of the desk once, light, with one bruised knuckle. "It's a courtesy."

He left.

I sat there with my heart going and the folder open and four million reasons not to trust anyone in this building. He'd said nothing about my name. He'd acted like it never happened. Like I was just a woman with a clipboard.

That scared me more than if he'd said it again.

The arena went quiet around six.

I stayed. The numbers weren't done with me, and I wasn't done with them. The desk lamp buzzed. The ice outside the window was a long blue sheet under work lights, and nothing moved on it.

"Still here."

I didn't turn around. "Roz."

"You eat?"

"Granola bar."

"That's not eating." She came around the desk in her old sweatshirt, reading glasses swinging. She set a paper cup down beside my elbow, right on top of the invoice I was staring at. "Drink."

"I'm fine."

"I didn't ask."

The cup was warm. It smelled like cinnamon and something dark and good. I wrapped my hands around it before I could stop myself.

"Cinnamon, no sugar," Roz said. "Just how you like it."

My hands went still.

I hadn't said that to Teddy. I hadn't said it to the man at the front desk, or the motel clerk, or anyone in Hartford. I'd only said it to one person in the last four months, in a safe house with a broken radiator, and he'd written it on a form.

I looked up.

Roz was already watching me. She wasn't smiling.

"Something wrong, honey?"

I never told anyone that.