“I’m not asking you to arrest my wife’s boss for adultery,” Daniel said.
“Good,” Mara replied.
“Because I don’t have handcuffs, and the legal system doesn’t repair trust.”
Mara examined the invitation, the hotel invoice, and the photograph of the postcard.
She asked about Saint Alden’s official name and the civil case number.
Daniel had neither.
She directed her assistant to request archived public filings, then asked permission to speak with Caroline’s lawyer.
She also warned Daniel that people connected to powerful institutions often responded to scrutiny by threatening employment, privacy, or reputation.
Every step should have a legitimate purpose, and every document should remain in its original state.
Jessica called while Daniel waited for the elevator.
He almost let it ring, then answered because her name had been tangled through the records and because they still had a mortgage and shared possessions to sort.
She said someone from Hale Meridian’s security office had come to her desk asking for her work laptop.
Her access to the company network had been suspended.
Richard’s assistant told her she was being placed on paid administrative leave while an unspecified conflict was reviewed.
“Do not give anyone your personal phone,” Daniel said.
“Contact an employment attorney.”
“Can I use Mara?”
“Mara represents me on the Saint Alden matter.
You need your own lawyer.”
Jessica was silent long enough that he thought the call had dropped.
Then she said she had not eaten since the day before.
Daniel resisted the reflex to ask whether she wanted him to bring soup.
He told her that Rebecca could recommend a counselor and that she should call someone she trusted.
His inability to make the pain disappear was not a failure of compassion.
That evening Daniel met his friend Luis Ortega at a repair shop where Luis restored old motorcycles.
They had worked together years earlier in a maintenance crew and still met twice a month to complain about unreliable customers and eat sandwiches over the workbench.
Luis listened as Daniel told him what had happened.
He took off his safety glasses and placed them beside a chipped coffee mug.
“You don’t have to tell me the intimate parts,” Luis said.
“What do you need?”
“A place to store some things,” Daniel replied.
“And somebody who’ll tell me when I’m being foolish.”
Luis showed him a locked cabinet behind the shop’s office and said he could use it for copies of documents, not anything he might later need to produce as original evidence.
