Chapter 69 Chapter 69

Chapter 69 Chapter 69
The building was mostly empty when Nia arrived at Xavier's office.
The floor had that particular quality of a space recently vacated a chair not fully pushed in, a coffee cup somebody meant to take to the kitchen, the overhead lights still on but the energy of the working day already gone.
She walked through it and her footsteps were the only sound. She knocked once on Xavier's door and pushed it open.
He was at his desk. He looked up. He did not look surprised to see her and she had not expected him to. 
Something about his expression told her he had been sitting here since the day ended and that whatever he was thinking about had not resolved into anything clean.
She closed the door. She sat down in the chair across from him and put her bag on the floor and looked at him directly.
"I need to tell you everything," she said. "Not some of it. All of it."
He set his pen down and gave her his full attention.
She took a breath. Then she began.
She started with the first file access, the one she had already told him about. She told it again quickly, just to establish the ground. 
Then she moved to the second file access. She told him she had accessed it two days ago, read it and closed it without sending it anywhere.
"And then Anthony called," she said.
"Yes."
"He knew immediately. He called that afternoon and told me he knew I had been in the file." She paused. "And he made an offer. The full address of t I have been searching for. 
The street, the building, the clinic schedule, everything. In exchange for a summary of what I had read."
Xavier said nothing.
"I sat with it for twenty-four hours," she said. "I thought about what you would say if I came to you. I thought about what it would cost you if the summary reached the competitor.
I thought about both of those things until four in the morning and then I typed the summary and sent it before I could change my mind." She met his gaze. "I knew it was wrong while I was doing it. I knew the competitor's move was coming before I pressed send. I sent it anyway."
The room was very quiet.
"I heard about the competitor's move mid-morning," she said. "I sat at my desk and closed my laptop and did not open it again. I knew immediately what I had caused." She looked at him. "That is all of it. Every piece of it. I am not here to make it sound like something it was not."
Xavier looked at her for a long moment. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I would rather you hear it from me than find out another way." She paused. "And because I am done carrying things alone even when they make me look bad. I have been doing that my whole life and it has cost more than anything I was protecting."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Did he send you the address?"
"He sent a photograph," she said. "A woman outside a clinic. He has not sent the address."
"He took the summary and has not delivered."
"Yes."
"You knew that was a risk."
"Yes." She said it plainly. "I knew the risk and I sent it anyway."
Xavier sat back. He looked at the desk for a moment and then back at her. "I know what this looks like," he said.
"I know," she said. "I said that first."
Something moved through his expression. Something more considered than either.
"I need you to go home tonight," he said. "I need time to think properly."
She nodded. She stood and picked up her bag. She walked to the door and stopped with her hand on the frame.
"Whatever you decide," she said.
He looked at her from across the quiet room. "Yes," he said.
She left.
Xavier sat alone in the office for a long time after the door closed behind her.
He thought about everything she had told him and the order she had told it in. He held the full account and turned it over. The first file access she had come to him about voluntarily.

The second she had not. The summary sent at four in the morning. The competitor's move. The photograph Anthony had used as the incentive. The full address Anthony had still not delivered.
He thought about the anonymous screenshot that had arrived in his inbox before she came to him this morning. He thought about the specific timing of it, arriving before she could come forward, designed to make her look caught rather than confessing. 
She had come forward anyway. Before he said a word, before he confronted her with anything.
He thought about what kind of person did that.
He thought about Gerard's dinner. He thought about the concern Gerard had raised, the specific reluctance with which he had raised it, the careful language. He thought about how long Diane had been cultivating Gerard. 
He thought about the anonymous screenshot and who had sent it and why and what the timing of every single piece of this, the access logs, the screenshot, Gerard, the competitor's move looked like when you laid it in a line and asked who had the most to gain from each piece arriving when it did.
He thought about Anthony.
He thought about a woman who had gotten up at four in the morning and made a decision she knew was wrong because the thing she was reaching for was the address of her mother.
He thought about what kind of pressure produced that specific decision and who had been applying that pressure from the beginning. He thought about the search. 
The months of it. The false lead Anthony had planted. The real lead that was still sitting in Anthony's drawer because he had sent the photograph and withheld the address.
He called Gia.
"I need everything you have on Anthony's recent activity," he said when Gia answered. "Every move since the ball was announced. The competitor contact, the screenshot origin, the mother search interference. All of it in one document."
"By morning," Gia said.
"Good." Xavier looked at the empty chair. "Keep this between us."
"Of course."