Nadia Brooks, my corporate attorney, already had the rear door open from the inside.
“Get in,” Nadia said, shifting her laptop to her knees to make room.
I climbed into the leather seat and pulled the door shut behind me, the heavy latch sealing out the quiet afternoon.
The driver shifted into drive immediately, the tires throwing up loose stones as we cleared the iron gates of the West Lake Hills property.
Nadia did not ask how I was, nor did she offer a tissue.
She reached into her large leather tote bag and pulled out a small plastic container of salted almonds, setting them on the console between us.
“Eat,” she said. “You have not had anything since breakfast, and we have a very long night ahead of us.”
I took three of the almonds and chewed them slowly, the salt dry on my tongue.
She simply opened a folder on her screen and turned the screen toward me.
“We have three hours before the bank servers lock for nightly maintenance,” she said.
“Did you secure the remote access to the Rowan Meridian ledger?” I asked.
“I did,” she said, tapping a finger against the bezel of her tablet.
“But we have a larger issue than your husband’s personal accounts,” she added.
The SUV moved smoothly down the steep curves of the hill toward the downtown skyline.
Nadia handed me the tablet, her thumb highlighting a column of six-figure entries from the spring quarter.
“These are billed under corporate development,” I said, squinting at the screen in the dimming light of the cabin.
“Our development budget was capped in January,” I noted.
“Look at the vendor name,” Nadia said.
The name Crestview Consulting appeared six times between March and June, each entry followed by an identical transfer of forty-eight thousand dollars.
“We do not use Crestview,” I said, my voice remaining level despite the sudden dryness in my throat.
“Arthur Vance handles all our external consulting, and his firm is billed under his own name,” I added.
