Claire held his gaze. "Even when the right thing costs you?" "Especially then." He said. "That's when it counts."
She looked at him for a long time. Then she said very quietly, "I don't know many people like you." "I know." He said. "That's not a compliment to the people you know."
Something moved across her face, the ghost of a smile. There and gone. Then she squared her shoulders and just like that, Claire Whitmore, the CEO, was fully present again, but different now, sharper somehow. Cleaner, like someone who has finally stopped carrying something and feels the ground differently under their feet. "All right."
She said. "Here's what we're going to need to do." She spent the next 2 hours making calls. Marcus sat at the table and drank coffee and was available when she needed to think out loud. Which was something she was only now learning to do, think out loud.
In front of another person, without performing the certainty she hadn't yet earned. She called her attorney first, walked him through the documents, listened, asked three precise questions and got three answers she needed. She called a financial investigator she'd used twice before, former SEC. Sharp and discreet and expensive and worth every dollar. She called the head of her legal team at home on a Saturday morning, which he would understand meant this was not a normal Saturday.
She did not call David Harrington yet. That call required a clean hand, a fully prepared position. No exposure, everything verified. She would make that call when she was ready. And she would make it count.
By 9:00 a. m. she had a plan. It was aggressive and precise, and it required everything to go right in less than 48 hours. Marcus drove her to her office on a Saturday morning. The building was nearly empty, a few junior analysts, a security guard who looked surprised to see the CEO walk in, a maintenance crew on the third floor. Claire went upstairs.
Marcus parked the car and sat there because that was the job. That had always been the job. And even now, with everything that was true between them and everything that was happening, the job mattered. Showing up mattered. Being where you said you'd be mattered.
Dale called him at 10:30. "You doing all right?" "Yeah." Marcus said. "I'm good."
"I heard Kelner's been making calls." Dale said. "People are uneasy." "People should be." Marcus said.