Chapter 66: Without Chorus

Lucas did not hang up.

He stepped away from the newspaper box so the foot traffic could pass, kept the phone to his ear, and put his free hand in his jacket pocket. The suspended badge was still there. It felt heavier than plastic.

"Mr. Sterling," Lucas said.

"Richard is fine," the man said. "We are past titles. You spent the afternoon in a conference room with my ex-wife and a lawyer who drinks bad coffee. Elena already told me how that call went. I am not calling to litigate it."

"Then why are you calling."

"Because Elena is excellent at formalities and terrible at reading people who do not sit in boardrooms," Richard said. "You are one of those people. You walked Cole into a cell without a title that matches the damage. That interests me."

Lucas watched a bus pull away from the curb. He did not fill the silence.

Richard waited two beats, then continued as if they had agreed on the pause.

"I am not in Charlotte," Richard said. "You already know that. The detective’s people checked a hotel I never intended to use. The freeze on the small accounts was expected. The primary trust moved because leaving money in a freezing jurisdiction is poor hygiene, not a confession. Elena asked for seventy-two hours because that is what counsel asks for. I am asking for ten minutes."

"Ten minutes where."

"Anywhere without a recorder and without Reed," Richard said. "A café. A parked car. A lobby that is not Vertex. You can keep your phone in your hand the entire time if that makes you feel righteous. I want to talk about Cole’s actual brief, not the story the press is writing. And I want to talk about what Victoria will do if she keeps treating this as a morality play."

"Talk to Reed," Lucas said. "Or talk to the detective. You do not get a private channel through me."

Richard made a soft sound that was almost a laugh. "Camilla Verman paid Reed’s retainer. That is interesting. Victoria suspended your badge. That is also interesting. Elena thinks you are an attaché with a talent for proximity. I think you are something less official and more expensive. Either way, you are currently the only person both women still answer."

Lucas kept his voice flat. "I am a cooperating witness. Cooperating witnesses do not take side meetings with the man whose trust funded the shells."

"Ah," Richard said. "So the detective already gave you the speech. Good. He is competent. He is also late. The money is gone. Cole is silent. Mads is bargaining for a lighter year. And you are standing on a sidewalk outside Victoria’s building with a phone you should have let ring."

"I answered," Lucas said. "That does not mean I am negotiating."

"I am not offering a negotiation," Richard said. "I am offering a fact. Nathan Cole did not walk into Vertex on a cold résumé. Someone inside opened the door. Elena will not put that name in a production letter because it creates a fight she cannot control. I will put it in your ear if you sit down with me once, alone, before Victoria files anything civil."

Lucas felt the offer land where Richard meant it to land. A name. A referral. The thing Victoria had already ordered the GC to pull.

"If you have a name," Lucas said, "you can put it in a letter to Reed. Or you can tell the detective. You do not get to trade it for isolation."

"Isolation is how adults finish messy divorces," Richard said. His tone did not rise. "Victoria closes doors. She always has. She closed one on me four years ago and called it dignity. She will close one on you the moment you stop being useful. I am offering you a piece of leverage that survives her temper. One meeting. No chorus."

"No," Lucas said.

The word sat between them without decoration.

Richard was quiet long enough that Lucas thought the line might have dropped. Then the voice came back, still measured.

"Elena said you were direct. She likes that. I find it wasteful. Very well. I will not ask twice on this call. Think about the referral. Think about what Victoria does to people who keep things from her. You already know that lesson. When you decide ten minutes is cheaper than another suspension, you have this number."

"I am going to hang up and call my lawyer," Lucas said. "And the detective. If you contact me again, they will hear it the same day."

"I would expect nothing less," Richard said. "Tell Victoria I remember how she closes doors. Tell Camilla I have no interest in her triangle. And tell yourself, Mr. Vintage, that refusing me does not make you clean. It only makes you slower."

The line went dead.

Lucas lowered the phone. His pulse was up. He did not wait for it to settle.

He called David Reed.

Reed picked up on the first ring this time.

"Vintage."

"Richard Sterling just called my personal phone from a local number," Lucas said. He started walking again, not toward the train, just away from Vertex’s entrance cameras. "He asked for a private meeting without you and without a recorder. He offered the name of whoever walked Cole into Vertex in exchange for ten minutes alone. I refused. I told him further contact goes through you and the detective. Call lasted under five minutes. I can write it up."

Reed was silent for a breath.

"Location," Reed said.

"Sidewalk, half a block south of Vertex. I did not agree to meet. I did not accept the offer. I did not confirm anything about Camilla beyond what he already stated."

"Good," Reed said. "Do not call that number back. Do not text it. Screenshot the call log and send it to me now. Then come to my office. I want your written account on paper before Elena’s courier shows up with whatever she is calling a production. Did he threaten you."

"Not directly. He said refusing him makes me slower. He said Victoria will close a door on me when I stop being useful. He told me to tell her he remembers how she closes doors. Same line Elena used upstairs."

"Of course he did," Reed said. "That line is for her, not for you. He wants it repeated. You will put it in the memo and you will not deliver it to her as a personal message. Clear?"

"Clear."

"Come in. Use the side entrance on Seventh. Do not stop for coffee. Do not take another unknown call unless it is the detective or my office."

Lucas hung up, screenshotted the call log, and emailed it to Reed while he walked. Then he dialed the detective.

The detective answered on the third ring with a sound that suggested he was already on another line and had switched over.

"Vintage. Make it short."

"Richard Sterling called me four minutes ago from a local prefix," Lucas said. "He is not in Charlotte. He asked for a private meeting without Reed. He offered the internal referral name that got Cole into Vertex if I sat down alone. I refused. Reed has the call log. I am going to Reed’s office to write it up."

"Stay on the sidewalks," the detective said. "Do not go anywhere he suggests. We are working the receiving bank. If he calls again, same protocol. And Vintage—do not repeat his door speech to Victoria as if you are his messenger. That is the point of the line."

"Reed already said that."

"Reed is right. Call me when the write-up is done."

Lucas hung up.

[Priority Quest Generated.]

[Objective: Deliver a complete written account of Richard Sterling’s direct outreach to David Reed before opposing counsel’s document production arrives, and do not accept any private meeting.]

[Reward: 400 AP.]

[Failure Penalty: Cooperating-witness status compromised; hostile party gains an uncontrolled channel.]

[Current AP Balance: 2100.]

Lucas read the lines once and kept moving. The system had a gift for stating the obvious in brackets.

Reed’s building looked the same as it had that morning: dark brick, tarnished brass, a lobby that smelled of dust and floor wax. A radiator clanked once behind the stairwell door. Lucas used the Seventh Street entrance, signed nothing, and took the stairs because the elevator was stuck on four with its doors open and no one inside.

Reed’s assistant waved him through without a visitor badge and pointed him to the same office with the sagging bookshelves. She did not ask why he was back. She had the look of someone who had already been told not to ask.

Reed was already at the desk with a fresh legal pad turned to a blank page and a recorder that was not yet running. A paper cup of coffee sat untouched near the phone.

"Sit," Reed said. "You talk. I write. Then you write. We compare. No flourishes."

Lucas sat. He recounted the call in sequence: the local prefix, Richard’s denial of Charlotte, the ten-minute ask, the referral offer, the refusal, the door line, the claim about Camilla’s retainer, the final remark about being slower. Reed stopped him twice for exact wording and once to confirm Lucas had not said yes to anything that could be twisted into assent.

When they finished the oral pass, Reed slid the second pad across the desk.

"Ink," Reed said. "Same method as the Elena notes. Photograph when you are done. I keep the original."

Lucas wrote for twenty minutes. His hand cramped around the pen. He did not editorialize. He did not write what he thought Richard wanted. He wrote what was said.

Reed read the pages, made two marginal corrections for clarity, and initialed the bottom of each sheet.

"This is clean," Reed said. "I am sending a copy to the detective and to Vertex outside counsel. Not to Victoria’s personal email. The GC can brief her. You are not the courier for Richard’s poetry."

"Understood."

[Priority Quest Completed!]

[Objective: Deliver a complete written account of Richard Sterling’s direct outreach to David Reed before opposing counsel’s document production arrives, and do not accept any private meeting.]

[Reward: 400 AP.]

[Current AP Balance: 2500.]

Lucas let the notice fade. Twenty-five hundred. Still nothing he could spend on making Victoria trust him again.

Reed’s desk phone rang. He answered, listened, and his mouth tightened in a way that had nothing to do with coffee.

"Send him up," Reed said. He hung up and looked at Lucas. "Courier from Pell and Garrity. Elena’s production, or the first slice of it. You stay in that chair. You do not touch the box. You do not open anything addressed to you if there is anything addressed to you."

Lucas stayed in the chair.

Two minutes later Reed’s assistant brought in a cardboard banker’s box sealed with red tape and a separate manila envelope resting on the lid. The envelope had Lucas’s name written on it in black ink, block letters, no return address beyond a Wilmington street he already knew.

Reed put on cotton gloves from a drawer as if he did this often enough to keep a supply. He photographed the box, the seal, and the envelope before he cut the tape.

Inside the box: labeled folders, a USB drive in an evidence bag that was not state-issued, and a cover letter on Pell and Garrity letterhead addressed to Reed and Vertex outside counsel. Reed skimmed the letter without reading it aloud.

"Partial," Reed said. "As predicted. Incorporation files. Engagement letters. Trust ledger pages with the beneficiary lines redacted. She calls the redactions ’pending privilege review.’"

He set the letter down and picked up the manila envelope by the corners.

"This was not in the production index," Reed said. "It has your name on it. I am opening it. You will look when I say you look."

He slit the envelope with a letter opener. Inside was a single sheet of heavy cream stationery and a photograph printed on plain copy paper.

Reed turned the photo so Lucas could see it without handing it over.

It was a still from a street camera or a long lens. Lucas and Victoria on the sidewalk outside her riverside building the night she had taken him home. Her hand on his arm. His face turned toward her. Timestamp in the corner from weeks that were not supposed to be anyone else’s business.

Reed turned the stationery next.

The note had no greeting.

Attachments make poor witnesses. Ten minutes still buys the referral name. The number you answered still works. — R

Reed set both items down on a clean folder and photographed them.

"You do not respond," Reed said. Quiet. Absolute. "You do not leave this office until I put that photo in a chain-of-custody note for the detective. Richard just turned a personal pressure play into evidence of witness contact. That helps us more than it helps him, unless you panic."

Lucas looked at the photo without reaching for it. Victoria’s profile in the street light. His own shoulder. A night that had been private until someone decided it was leverage.

His phone buzzed on the desk.

Unknown number. Same local prefix as Richard’s call.

Reed looked at the screen, then at Lucas.

"Do not answer," Reed said. "Not this time."

The phone kept buzzing.