Chapter 5 - THE REASON LARKIN REALLY HIRED ME
Penelope held the photograph in front of Larkin.
“Three years ago.”
He said nothing.
“The exact month you hired me.”
Still nothing.
She laughed bitterly.
“My mother has excellent timing.”
Thomas moved toward the door.
Larkin’s security blocked him.
“I’m going downstairs.”
“No,” Larkin said.
Thomas frowned.
“You think I stole the ledger?”
“I think Eleanor specifically told Penelope not to trust you.”
“Eleanor hated everybody.”
“Apparently she made exceptions.”
Penelope opened the ledger.
Most entries were coded.
But the final pages were recent.
Three years recent.
Her stomach tightened.
“This wasn’t hidden for fifteen years.”
Larkin looked over her shoulder.
“Someone kept updating it.”
“Mom.”
“Or someone working for her.”
Penelope found her own name.
PENELOPE WOODS - MONITOR ONLY.
Below it:
PLACEMENT AT STEVES FINANCIAL APPROVED.
She looked at Larkin.
“Placement?”
He exhaled.
“Your application wasn’t random.”
Her chest tightened.
“You said my résumé crossed your desk.”
“It did.”
“Because somebody put it there.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I genuinely don’t know.”
He opened his phone and pulled up an old email.
Three years earlier, Larkin received an anonymous message.
HIRE PENELOPE WOODS. PUT HER IN ACCOUNTING. DO NOT TELL HER WHY. SHE WILL SEE WHAT OTHERS MISS.
Larkin had obeyed.
Penelope stared.
“You hired an unknown person because an anonymous email ordered you?”
“No.”
“What made you?”
“There was an attachment.”
A scan of a page from the original Steves ledger.
Information only Larkin’s father and Eleanor should have known.
Proof.
Penelope sat down.
Her entire career suddenly felt manipulated.
College.
Student debt.
Job applications.
The interview.
Had her mother been moving pieces from somewhere invisible?
“What happened after you hired me?”
“I watched.”
“Romantic.”
“I looked for signs you were sending information outside.”
“And?”
“You weren’t.”
“Because I wasn’t spying.”
“I know.”
“When did you decide I was safe?”
Larkin’s face softened almost imperceptibly.
“About seven months in.”
“Why?”
“You corrected a twenty-three-dollar discrepancy in my travel expenses.”
Penelope stared.
“That convinced you?”
“You spent forty minutes tracking twenty-three dollars in an organization moving millions.”
“That means I’m irritating, not trustworthy.”
“It meant the numbers mattered to you even when nobody was watching.”
She hated that the answer affected her.
Then Thomas laughed from across the room.
“You two finished?”
Penelope ignored him.
“What did you do three years ago that my mother wants me to know?”
Larkin looked toward the ledger.
Then at her.
“I killed the old accounting system.”
“That sounds disappointingly legal.”
“I also removed four senior men who controlled it.”
“Removed?”
“They’re alive.”
Penelope exhaled.
“Where?”
“Prison.”
She frowned.
“How?”
“I gave federal investigators evidence anonymously.”
Thomas’s smile vanished.
Penelope stared at Larkin.
“You informed on your own organization?”
“On men trafficking weapons and laundering through charities.”
Thomas stepped forward.
“You sanctimonious bastard.”
Larkin ignored him.
“I inherited something rotten. I decided some pieces needed to disappear.”
Penelope’s mind raced.
“My mother knew?”
“I think she guided me.”
“Without contacting you.”
“Yes.”
“Why secretly?”
“Because if anyone knew someone inside the organization was feeding evidence to investigators, I wouldn’t have survived.”
Penelope looked at Thomas.
His face had changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Then she understood.
“Thomas knew.”
Larkin turned.
Thomas smiled slowly.
“I suspected.”
Penelope’s blood went cold.
Thomas reached into his jacket.
Security moved instantly.
But he only produced a phone.
On the screen was a message received two minutes earlier.
STOP READING THE LEDGER OR ELEANOR DIES TONIGHT.
Attached was a live photograph.
Eleanor sat tied to a chair somewhere dark.
May you like
For the first time in fifteen years, Penelope was looking at her mother alive.
And terrified.
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