THE AUDITOR

Chapter 5

Nora

The doors to the Calloway ballroom opened, and three hundred people stopped breathing.

I wore black. A long dress with an open back, no jewelry, and bare fingers. I had chosen it because black is the color of a closed book.

Jonah Pike stood beside me in a midnight suit, my hand resting lightly on his arm.

"They're staring," he murmured.

"Let them."

"You're sure about this?"

"No." I smiled at a senator who had once kissed my cheek at Christmas. He looked away like I'd burned him. "But I'm very good at doing things I'm not sure about."

The ballroom glittered like a jewelry box. Crystal chandeliers. White roses. A string orchestra on a dais. At the far end, beneath a banner that read CALLOWAY: FAMILY FIRST, stood Frank in his silver tuxedo, still as a statue.

Beside him stood Dom, pale and sweating. And beside Dom, one hand on her flat stomach and a look of perfect sorrow on her face, stood Vivian.

I took a breath. I walked in.

I did not look at them once.

On Friday, at four in the morning, I had found my father.

Not him. But his handwriting.

I'd been going through the Book, page by page, hunting for any change someone might have made. Page 212 stopped me. The dot at the end of the last line was in the wrong place. Not under the final letter. Under the second to last.

I sat very still. I remembered my father's hand guiding mine across a page when I was seven. Always the dot, Nora. It means this is true.

He'd never told me the dot could also mean look closer.

I pressed the dot. And a second Book opened inside my first.

It was thick, old, and written in a hand I would know anywhere. The title page read: PROJECT CORONATION. Under it, a list of names. Powerful names. Names that appeared on television and on money.

I read the first page in the dark, with my hand over my mouth.

Then I closed it. I did not sleep. Instead, I called a sound technician named Kevin, who ran the ballroom's screens. Three years ago his mother needed a hospital bed, and the Calloways had made him a promise. It sat in my Book. Unpaid.

I had crossed it out.

"Kevin," I'd said, "I need a favor."

He had been quiet for a long moment. Then he'd said, "Whatever you need, Miss Whitlock. I owe you more than you know."

The orchestra began to play.

It was a slow, smoky song. I'd chosen it myself, an old one, with a low trumpet and a heartbeat of drums.

Jonah stopped in the middle of the floor and held out his hand.

Three hundred people watched.

I placed my palm in his. Then I stepped forward, put my other hand on his shoulder, and took the lead.

His mouth twitched. "You really mean it."

"I said I would."

"No one has ever led me."

"Then relax, Mr. Pike." I moved us in a slow, deliberate turn. "You're about to enjoy it."

His hand settled at the small of my bare back. It was warm. It was steady. And it did something to my pulse that I filed away, sternly, for later.

"Your heart is racing," he said softly.

"I'm dancing."

"You're terrified."

"I'm leading."

He laughed, a real one, low and unguarded. Heads turned all around the room. I felt his eyes on my face, dark and curious and something else I wasn't ready to name.

"Nora," he said. "Whatever happens in the next ten minutes. I need you to know—"

"Not now."

"Nora—"

"The song's ending," I said. "Hold me one more second."

He did.

Across the room, Dom's face had gone the color of paper. Frank stood stiff as a post, his eyes fixed on Jonah's hand on my back.

The last note of the trumpet faded.

I stepped out of Jonah's arms, turned, and walked straight to the stage.

Frank took one step toward me. "Nora, sweetheart—"

"Frank." I kept walking. "Not tonight."

I climbed the stairs. A silver microphone stood waiting. I lifted it.

"Good evening," I said.

The room fell silent as a tomb.

"Some of you know me as the Auditor. Some of you know me as Frank's girl. Tonight, I'd like to introduce you to a third person." I turned toward the screen behind me. "Nora Whitlock. Daughter of Daniel Whitlock."

A ripple went through the crowd. Frank's face tightened.

I nodded to the back of the room, where Kevin stood at the control board.

The giant screens above the dais lit up.

PROJECT CORONATION.

Gasps. Chairs scraped.

Page one filled the wall in my father's handwriting. A list of names, ten years long, each beside a date and a promise. A promise to bury a crime. A promise to make a person disappear. A promise signed in the Calloway family's name.

At the top sat the sitting Vice President of the United States.

Below him, the Senate Majority Leader. Below him, the Governor of Illinois.

"Oh my God," someone whispered.

I had read the names. I had not scrolled to the bottom. I'd been too angry to read the last line.

Kevin scrolled for me.

The last line rose up the screen, and three hundred people read it at the same time I did.

N. Whitlock. Principal Asset. Disposition: pending.

My name.

My own name, in my father's hand, at the bottom of a list of the most powerful men in America.

The silence broke like glass.

People screamed. People ran. A man in the front row grabbed his phone with shaking hands. Frank shouted something I couldn't hear. Dom stared at the screen with his mouth open, and in his face I saw something I didn't expect. He hadn't known.

My phone buzzed in my clutch.

I pulled it out with numb fingers.

Incoming call: Vice President.

It rang once, then stopped. Another call lit the screen right behind it.

Incoming call: Senate Majority Leader.

Then another. Then another. My phone vibrated so hard it nearly slipped from my hand. A new number appeared, a long string with a Washington area code.

Incoming call: White House Switchboard.

A text popped up beneath it.

Whatever you want. Name it. Please.

I stared at the word please.

I had never in my life seen a man like that say it.

I could not breathe. The room spun. And then, beneath the others, one more message slid onto the screen.

The sender was a contact I had never deleted, even after the funeral.

Dad (deceased).

Stop reading. Walk off that stage. Now.

My blood turned to ice.

My father had been dead for twelve years. His number had been silent for twelve years. And now, in the middle of the most dangerous moment of my life, my phone was lighting up with his name.

I lifted my eyes to the crowd.

Every single face in that ballroom was staring at me. The Vice President's men. The senators. The Calloway soldiers with their hands inside their jackets.

And somewhere in the back, in the shadows by the balcony door, a tall man in a gray coat was lifting a phone to his ear.

The phone in my hand rang.

Dad (deceased).

I pressed it to my ear.

A voice I had not heard since I was seventeen said, very softly, "Hello, Nora."

Then every light in the building went out.