the firm of Latham and White is taking Mrs. Sellers’s case, and that we are commencing civil actions against both the Brooklyn Standard and Nell Bluth for her reckless, irresponsible reporting. While we are far too late to prevent this tragedy, I can assure you that Noah Sellers will have his day in court at last, and some measure of justice will be done.”
“Son of a bitch,” Nell murmured.
And through it all, she kept hearing the voice of Leda Swan. “You’ll see what I can do to you.”
Bill stopped the video.
“We were served an hour ago,” he said. “You can expect you’ll get hit with your own papers by this afternoon. There’s probably a process server out hunting for you right now.”
“How bad?” Nell asked.
“They’re looking for thirty million in damages. From us. No idea how much they’re going to go after you for. Maybe the same.”
The floor dropped out from under Nell’s feet. The ceiling came tumbling down after her.
“Bill,” she said, “I swear to God—”
He rolled his chair back and gestured to the wall behind him. The trophy wall. The scoops, the exclusives, the revelations that spoke truth to power.
“Half this wall’s got your name on it,” he said. “And now? Every goddamn headline has a big red question mark.”
“I’ll investigate. This guy Barlow, he’s full of shit. He has to be. I’ll prove it.”
“Absolutely not,” one of the lawyers said.
Bill slumped in his chair. “Word from on high. The investors want you out, pronto.”
“Define ‘out,’” Nell said.
“Suspended. Without pay, for two weeks.”
“And after that?”
“By then,” he told her, “the legal eagles here should have a better perspective on the situation. Good grasp of our odds and which way the wind of public sentiment is blowing. This isn’t just about the lawsuit. PR is a factor.”
“Your reputation is…tainted,” one of the lawyers said. “We can’t have a reporter known for egregious misconduct on the company masthead.”
“You’re firing me,” Nell said.
“You’re suspended,” Bill said. “We’ll see how the wind blows. Two weeks. We’ll talk about it. For now, pack up your desk and go on home. Don’t show your face around here until I call you.”
Nell drifted across the bullpen. She scrounged up a cardboard box from one of the filing cabinets. Dead woman walking, she thought. People she’d worked with for years looked past her, talked around her, turned her into a ghost.
Everyone but Tyler. He put his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
“No. You heard?”
“They ambushed me soon as I walked in the door. Wanted to know what I knew and when I knew it.”
“If you’d shared that byline with me, you’d be packing up too.” Nell stared at her desk. “Except you didn’t want anything to do with that story because you said it smelled funny.”
“That doesn’t mean I was right. Doesn’t mean Barlow is telling the truth, either. I checked him out. The timeline works. Sellers was defending him on kiddie-porn charges right around the time the laptop turned up. Over two dozen counts of distribution and production, so Barlow was going down, hard. The best Sellers could do was plead him into a prison close to his family and a couple of good-behavior perks, but the guy’s going to spend most of the rest of his life behind bars.”
“Meaning he’s got no reason not to lie if somebody gave him the right incentive,” Nell said. “What’s one more charge, considering he went down for a bigger crime? It’d be like confessing to stealing someone’s wallet when you’re already in prison for robbing a bank. And Leda Swan called me this morning. She knows about the USB drive.”
Nell caught a shape at the edge of her vision. One of the lawyers, standing in Bill’s office door, staring at her. Making sure she was on her way out. She tugged open her top drawer and dumped a random handful of clutter into the cardboard box, dry pens and old notepads, loose memories.
“We still have our first option,” Tyler said.
“Meaning?”
“Go straight to the cops. Hand over the files, tell them everything, and let them handle it. Wash our hands clean. Once we’re out of the picture, Swan doesn’t have any reason to go after you anymore.”
And that was exactly what Leda wanted. The paltry evidence they’d gathered might sting the Weaver Group, but if they had really buried all traces of the Loom’s illegal functions, it couldn’t pierce the beast’s scales. Leda’s hands stayed clean, and even if the cops arrested Dieter Rime for Arthur’s murder on