Chapter 115: The Photo

Chapter 115: The Photo
Amelia's POV

I stared at the message for longer than I should have.

Clara was still on Grayson's lap patting his face and Elena was somewhere in the other room with Sarah and the kitchen was warm and ordinary and I was standing at the counter with my phone in my hand and something cold moving through my chest that I didn't want to name yet.

The photo was clear enough. Grayson sitting across from a woman I didn't recognise, a restaurant I'd never been to, both of them leaning slightly toward each other the way people did when the conversation was pulling them in, and the timestamp said the fourteenth which was a Thursday three weeks ago and I was trying to remember what he'd told me he was doing that Thursday and I couldn't place it immediately and that was the detail that sat wrong, that I couldn't place it.

I put my phone face down on the counter and turned around.

Grayson was looking at me because he always looked at me when I went quiet in a particular way, and Clara was still on his lap and his hand was on her back and he said "what is it" because he could read my face before I could read it myself.

I picked the phone back up and walked to him and held the screen toward him without saying anything and watched his face.

He looked at it and his expression didn't do what a guilty person's expression did, it didn't shift or flatten or go careful in that managing way, it just went still in the way of someone who is surprised and working backward to understand something, and he said "where did this come from."

"Unknown number," I said. "Just now."

He looked at the photo again and then at me and said "that's Serena Walsh. She's a corporate attorney who contacted me about the Diane Webb situation three weeks ago. She reached out through a mutual contact saying she had information about Carter Briggs that could be relevant to our legal position." He paused. "I met her once. At that restaurant. For forty minutes. I didn't tell you because I didn't think it was significant and I was dealing with twelve other things that week."

I looked at him and he looked back at me and I believed him, not because I was naive or because I couldn't imagine him lying but because I knew the difference between the face he made when he was telling the full truth and every other face he made, and this was the full truth face, all the way down.

But believing him didn't make the message disappear.

"Someone took that photo," I said. "Someone was watching you that day and they've been sitting on it and they chose tonight to send it."

Grayson looked at the phone again and I could see him thinking the same thing I was thinking, that this wasn't random, that the timing of it, the same day the safety report story broke, was not a coincidence.

"Who knew about the meeting with Serena Walsh," I said.

"My assistant scheduled it," he said slowly. "And it would have been on my digital calendar." He looked at me. "Which means anyone with access to my calendar."

"Which means someone inside the company," I said.

He stood up and set Clara down gently and she wandered toward the living room unbothered and he said "this is Carter Briggs trying to create noise," and his voice had gone flat and certain in the way it did when he'd landed on something he was sure of. "The article exposed him today too and he knows it. If he can make this about my marriage instead of his suppression of that report then the story changes."

I looked at my phone and then at Grayson and felt the anger sit alongside the relief of understanding, because that was the thing about a message like this, even when you believed your husband completely it still planted something, a small cold seed of what if that you had to actively choose not to water, and the fact that someone had calculated on exactly that was the thing that made me genuinely furious.

"Forward me the number," Elena said from the doorway, and I turned to see her standing there with Sarah on her hip and her expression doing the thing it did when she'd decided to be useful, focused and sharp and not asking permission. "I know someone who can trace unknown numbers. It's probably burner but it's worth trying."

"How do you know someone who does that," I said.

"Graduate school is very educational," she said simply, and held her hand out for my phone.

I gave it to her and she photographed the message and the number and handed it back and went to make a call from the hallway and Grayson and I stood in the kitchen looking at each other.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For the meeting not being something I mentioned. Not because it was what that message is implying but because you shouldn't have found out through a stranger's phone message on the worst day we've had in months."

"No," I said. "I shouldn't have."

"I should have told you," he said.

"Yes," I said. "You should have."

We stood there with that for a moment and then I said "but I believe you" and he let out a slow breath and I crossed to him and stood close enough that he could put his arms around me which he did, and I let the cold thing in my chest settle into something warmer.

"Who is she," I said into his shoulder, not suspiciously, just wanting the full picture. "Serena Walsh."

"Forty-five. Partner at a litigation firm in Midtown. She represented a client in a case against Carter Briggs six years ago that got settled quietly and she thinks the same pattern we saw with Marcus Webb appeared in her case too. She wanted to know if we were interested in a coordinated legal strategy." He paused. "I told her I'd think about it and I haven't followed up because everything else happened."

"Follow up," I said. "She sounds useful."

He almost laughed, which was what I'd intended.

Elena came back in and said "burner phone, purchased in cash at a drugstore in Midtown three weeks ago" and looked at Grayson and said "the same week the fourteenth was."

"Carter Briggs," Grayson said.

"Almost certainly," Elena said. "But we can't prove it yet."

She said it with the particular energy of someone who fully intended to prove it eventually, which was so Elena that I actually felt better, and Grayson looked at her and said "thank you" and she said "don't thank me, just win," and went back to the living room with Sarah.

I picked up my phone and looked at the message one more time and then blocked the number and put my phone in my pocket and looked at Grayson.

"Diane Webb's statement comes out tomorrow," I said. "That's what actually matters right now."

"Yes," he said.

"Everything else is noise," I said.

"Yes," he said again, and he took my hand and held it and I let him and the kitchen was quiet again except for the girls in the other room and Elena's voice low and steady reading something to Sarah, and I thought about Carter Briggs sitting somewhere tonight having sent that message and waiting for damage to happen, and I thought about how badly he'd underestimated us, and I felt something settle in me that was somewhere between calm and ready.

Tomorrow was going to be a big day.

And we were going to be fine.