Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
I don’t know how I made it to the office; my legs were like jelly and my mind raced to the point where I couldn’t even plan what to say. I knocked on the door, and his face when I entered the room was the picture of shocked outrage.
“What is this?” he asked. “What are you, of all people, doing here?”
“I… I want… I need to talk to you,” I stammered, cursing my nerves.
“There is nothing you could say that I would want to hear. How dare you come in here like you own the place? Leave, or I will call security.” His face was set like stone, but his eyes were flashing with anger.
I turned to go, and then turned back. He stared at me open-mouthed, and lifted the phone from the desk, his finger hovering over the button to reception.
“Look, I know you don’t want me here, and I understand that. You can call security if you need to. But I’m going to say what I came here to say.” I spoke fast, so that if he did decide to call security, he would at least have to listen to me. “I did what I did to protect the family business that my father and mother built for us. Just like you are doing. But I’m here now because I believe Keegan is innocent, and you owe it to him to at least hear me out and look at these papers.”
He leaned back on the corner of his desk with his arms folded and made no move to take the papers that I held out to him.
“Please,” I said. “I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t care about your son, and if you can’t see that, then I will take this to the police.”
“Why bring it here at all?” he asked. “Why not go straight to the police?”
“Because I shouldn’t have these,” I said, losing my composure for a second, trying to steady my bottom lip which was threatening to wobble. “But I am trying to do the right thing.”
“What is this?” he asked, taking the bundle from me, and flicking through the pages roughly.
“Financial documents, reports, things I took when I was backing up company files that I shouldn’t even have had access to. And you can report that if you’d like. But before you do, read them. If there are financial irregularities to prove Keegan guilty, they aren’t in these files. I have a digital copy with the dates of retrieval, too,” I said, holding up the USB key. Beatrix had made another copy, warning me that we couldn’t be too careful.
The significance of what he held in his hands dawned on him then, and he sat down at Keegan’s desk and started to flick through them.
“I don’t know that this will help,” I said, moving beside him. “But if the files incriminating him have been doctored in some way, this will prove it.”
“But why? Who would doctor financial files to set him up?” he exclaimed, and I thought he was going to get angry again. “Did you…”
“Not me,” I said, firmly. “But I would guess it’s the same person who paid for inside information from Dynasty Games. And he called himself Keegan Callahan, but I can assure you it wasn’t him.”
Mr. Callahan turned slightly pale, and looked back at the paperwork. “This is a lot to look over,” he said.
“I will leave it with you,” I said.
He looked up at me. “This was a brave thing you just did, and I appreciate that. I hope my son knows how lucky he is to have someone willing to fight this hard for him, whether any of this proves to be useful or not.”
“Will you tell me where he is?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered, and then softened slightly. “But he hasn’t left the state.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“I tried,” he said, helplessly, all fierceness gone. “I tried to get him to come back.”
Chapter 43
KEEGAN
FOR WEEKS I HAD been jumping every time the phone rang. I told myself it was because at any moment I could expect a call from the police asking me to come back in for questioning, or a call from my lawyer to update me on what I should expect. But whenever the phone went, my first thought wasn’t the cops or the lawyers, or even my ever-disappointed parents. My first thought was always Freya. And it made me so angry with myself. I felt like a sucker for punishment. So when the phone rang on a dull Tuesday morning while I was standing in the middle of a field trying to convince a pregnant mare to let me get near her, and I saw her name on the screen, I considered not answering at all. When I did pick it up, I couldn’t bring myself to even speak to her.