Chapter 115 Taken Down

Down the hall, Serena had stopped pretending to cooperate.

"You can stop looking at me like that. I’m not the other woman here. Eira is."

"Miss Winthrop, I’ll say this one more time. You’re entitled to have an attorney present."

"I don’t need one, because I haven’t done anything." She pushed her cup a few inches away. "Sebastian and I were together first. She came along when he was at rock bottom and she got her hooks in and she made sure it stuck. He doesn’t love her. He has never loved her. So yes, he bought me things. What part of that is confusing to you?"

The agent wrote something down.

"He married her because the timing worked. He picked me. You tell me which one of us is the mistress."

"Noted. Back to the question."

"I never told him anything classified and he never asked me to. I couldn’t have anyway. Eira Crawford had me locked out of the main lab inside a week, ask anybody, ask her, she’ll tell you herself. She wouldn’t let me near a terminal."

"Sit back, please."

"This is unbelievable."

"Sit back, Miss Winthrop. Now tell me about the car."

Two doors down, Dr. Victor Winthrop had a paper cup of water in front of him and a lawyer at his shoulder, and he’d given the same three answers a dozen different ways without once raising his voice.

He had no knowledge of any financial arrangement involving his granddaughter. She had never held core access, so there was nothing available for her to disclose.

Her placement had gone through the ordinary channels, which he would encourage them to review.

An hour of it. Then they sent in somebody else.

The new one didn’t warm up. He put two folders on the table, Serena’s personnel file and the original hiring requirements for the Sovereign Processor Initiative, and he left them both closed.

"Her paperwork’s in order. It’s the timing I keep coming back to."

"The program encountered a technical issue. We retained an outside consultant with overseas training. I’d refer you to the protocol on consultant hires, it’s not a determination I made alone."

"Dr. Crawford resolved that issue. Your granddaughter never touched it."

"Dr. Crawford declines to work collaboratively with anyone. I’d hardly hold my granddaughter responsible for that."

The agent left the folders where they were.

"She’s been on that project a few weeks. You can’t name me one thing she contributed and you can’t tell me why she needed to be in that building. That’s a problem for somebody. It might not be a problem for me."

Dr. Victor Winthrop’s lawyer leaned in and said something short.

"Unless you have evidence my granddaughter disclosed classified material," Dr. Victor Winthrop said, "I think we’re finished."

"You are. She isn’t. Neither is Mr. Hale."

The lead agent motioned for someone to walk him out. He’d come in as a witness. He hadn’t touched a dollar of Alpha Sebastian Hale’s money and how Serena got hired was going to be somebody’s problem at the institute long before it was ever the Bureau’s, and everyone in the room understood that, which was most of why he’d been so calm.

He was through the door with his coat over his arm when the agent spoke again.

"One more thing, Doctor."

He stopped.

"The institute called about twenty minutes ago. Late hire, no contribution on record, open security review. Leadership took a vote. She’s off the Sovereign Processor Initiative as of this morning."

The color drained out of his face.

All of it for nothing. Every call he’d made, every marker he’d called in, every old colleague he’d leaned on until they stopped picking up.

He had spent down his own name to get Serena’s badge into that lab, and she’d been one breakthrough away from first author on the paper that mattered. The kind of credit that follows you the rest of your career.

Twenty minutes on the phone and it was gone.

His ears started ringing. The hallway tilted. He grabbed for the doorframe and missed.

Somebody yelled for a medic. Ten minutes later the sirens pulled out of the lot with him on a gurney.

--

Back at the convention center, lunch was almost over.

Davies found her in the hallway with a copy of Alpha Killian’s file in his hand. It had been balled up and flattened so many times the creases had gone soft.

"You want to see this?" He asked it like he was hoping she’d pass.

Claire took it right out of his hand.

Then she stopped.

"This is where it all came from? The bags, the car, the condo? He was paying for every bit of it?"

"Yeah."

"For how long?"

"Long enough."

Claire looked back down at the page and her hand started shaking. "This says three hundred a month. Three hundred thousand. While you were on his insurance and driving a car with a hundred and forty thousand miles on it."

"That sounds right."

"I want to throw up."

Davies crouched, gathered the pages Claire had let slip, flipped through a few. He read enough to see why, then walked it over and dropped it in the trash.

"Don’t sit here reading that."

Eira’s mouth twitched. "I’m the one who gave Mr. Sterling that number. It’s why I filed for divorce."

She’d handed over the amount and the account it came out of. It had gone all the way around and come back to take Alpha Sebastian’s contract with it.

Davies didn’t answer. His hand closed tight on his bag strap.

Claire had plenty to say. She went for two straight minutes, mostly variations on garbage and a couple of things she’d never have said in front of Davies on a normal day. He let her finish.

Eira filled a cup and put it in her hand halfway through.

"Hale Group’s out of the bid," Davies said when she ran out of air. "And leadership voted on Serena this morning. She’s off the project. Her name won’t be on anything."

"Shut up. Seriously?"

Eira’s shoulders came down an inch.

"What about the leak?" Claire said. "Did she actually do it?"

Davies shook his head.

Two agents came up the hall before he could get into it.

"Dr. Crawford. Couple of follow-ups."

"Sure."

"You never gave Miss Winthrop access to core data. That accurate?"

Eira looked at the one asking, then at the one with the notebook. She knew exactly what this was. No access, no leak, nothing to see here.

"That’s accurate. I never gave her access."

She let it sit a beat.

"That doesn’t mean she never got near it. I have video of her in the main lab after hours, at a terminal that wasn’t hers, pulling at files she wasn’t cleared for."