The write access didn't come through.

Not at end of day, not in the morning, not by the time I'd been at Calloway for forty-eight hours and had identified six separate accounts worth looking at more closely.

I went to Reid's office.

His assistant said he was in a meeting.

I sat down in one of the chairs outside his office.

The assistant looked at me.

"I'll wait," I said.

She went back to her computer.

Twenty minutes later Reid came out of his office with two other executives, conversation in progress. He saw me and his expression didn't change, which was itself a tell. People who weren't doing anything wrong generally showed some surprise when an auditor was sitting outside their office.

"Ms. Reyes," he said.

"Mr. Calloway," I said. "The write access."

"I'm still working on it," he said.

The other executives were watching with the specific interest of people who knew there was a situation and wanted to understand it.

"It's been two days," I said.

"System access changes require IT approval," he said.

"I know how system access works," I said. "I also know that a VP of Finance can expedite IT approval in about six minutes with a phone call."

A pause.

"Let's take this inside," he said.

He said something to the other executives and they dispersed. He held his office door.

I went in.

He closed the door.

"The write access is a security issue," he said. "Giving an external party write access to our financial systems—"

"I'm not an external party," I said. "I'm a mandated auditor under the terms of the merger agreement. Article Seven, Section Three, paragraph—"

"I know what Article Seven says," he said.

"Then you know that obstructing the audit is a material breach," I said.

He was very still.

"Nobody is obstructing anything," he said.

"The write access," I said.

"I'll have it for you by end of day."

"You said that yesterday," I said.

"And I'm saying it again today," he said.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

We were standing on opposite sides of his desk in a glass-walled office on the thirty-second floor of a building that cost more to rent per month than my apartment cost per year, and he was trying to manage me the way executives managed things they didn't want examined.

I was not manageable.

"Reid," I said.

He blinked slightly. First name. He hadn't expected that.

"The company you work for," I said, "is in the middle of a merger that Atlas Corp's board has approved contingent on a clean audit. If the audit comes back with unresolved questions about the financial integrity of Calloway's books, Atlas's board has the contractual right to pull out. This merger represents—"

"I know what it represents," he said.

"Four point three billion dollars," I said. "That's what's at stake. If I can't do my job because I don't have basic system access, the merger is at risk. Is that what you want?"

He held my gaze.

"End of day," he said. "You'll have the write access by five."

I had it by four-fifty.

I sat at my workstation and started annotating.

I worked until nine.

At nine I became aware that Reid was still in the building — I could see his office light from the fourth floor, and I could see, occasionally, the outline of him at his desk or moving to the window.

Who worked this late in a building someone else was auditing?

Someone with something to watch.

I saved my files.

I encrypted the drive.

I closed the laptop.

I looked at his office light one more time.

I thought: what are you hiding, Reid Calloway.

I was going to find out.
The write access arrived at four-fifty-nine, which was the specific forty-five-second margin of someone meeting a deadline on purpose.

I noted this.

He was testing me. Making me wait, then delivering precisely at the last moment, establishing that he set the pace, not me. It was a power play, the kind that was subtle enough to deny but obvious enough to land.

I opened the files and got to work.

Over the next three hours I annotated twelve transactions.

At seven-thirty I straightened my back and looked at what I had.

The annotations were directional, not conclusive. I was flagging anomalies for follow-up, not building a case. But the anomalies were there, and they were consistent, and they pointed at the same sub-account they'd been pointing at since Q3.

4470.

Reid Calloway's division.

I stood up. Stretched. Looked around the fourth floor.

The analytics team had gone home at six. The floor was empty except for me and the ambient hum of servers and the cleaning crew moving somewhere below.

From where I was sitting, I could see part of the thirty-second floor through the glass. The corridor, part of the executive suite. A light on in what I had mapped as Reid's corner office.

He was still here.

I thought about that.

I thought about the people I'd known who stayed late in buildings where something was happening. Usually one of three reasons: they were workaholics, they were monitoring the situation, or they were hiding something that required active maintenance.

Reid Calloway didn't seem like a workaholic in the classic sense. He was controlled, not obsessive — the specific self-possession of someone who had calibrated themselves for long games, not sprints.

Which left two options.

I saved my files. Locked the workstation. Took the elevator down.

In the lobby I turned and looked back at the building.

Thirty-second floor, corner office, light still on.

Watching, I thought.

I was also watching.

We'd see who blinked first.