She photographed that, too. She found the photo she’d been looking for in the last stack on the third table.
Not a document, an actual photograph printed on standard paper, slightly blurred at the edges as if it had been taken quickly or from a distance.
Two people at what looked like a restaurant table, Celestine in a dark blazer leaning forward.
Across from her, a man she didn’t recognize except that she’d heard his name twice now in context that meant he was important.
Fletcher Voss. Between them on the table, a document. Celestine’s finger pointed to something on it.
Voss was nodding. The timestamp printed at the bottom of the photo, from whatever camera system had captured it, read nine months ago, one month before the engagement.
She stood very still in the center of the room and breathed. Then she copied what she had onto the secure cloud folder Callaway had set up for her, three layers of encryption, the attorney’s server, and deleted the transfer from her phone, and left the room exactly as she’d found it, every document in its stack, every chair in its position, the door locked behind her.
She was in the main hallway, key card in her apron pocket, 12 ft from the door, when she heard footsteps behind her.
She turned. Celestine stood at the East Wing entrance. She was not supposed to be here until evening.
She had come back early, or she had never left. And she was looking at Imani with those gray eyes that had stopped performing entirely, the full unguarded attention of someone who has run the calculation and arrived at a conclusion.
“You went in,” Celestine said. Imani didn’t answer. Celestine’s eyes moved to her apron pocket, the slight outline of the key card.
She put it together in the time it took to draw a breath. The smile that followed was not the beautiful, practiced one.
It was something older than that, something that didn’t need to pretend. “You have absolutely no idea,” she said very quietly, “what you’ve just done.”
She pulled out her phone. “Put it away,” Imani said. Celestine looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
