Chapter 7: The San Francisco Call
I asked Evelyn over breakfast.
She set down her coffee cup.
A small, precise movement.
The kind she made when she was deciding how much to say.
"We're looking into it," she said.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the honest one.
We don't have a name yet.
The number is registered to a forwarding service — the kind used by people who don't want to be found." She looked at me across the table.
"Daniel has someone working on it."
"How long?"
"A day.
Maybe two."
I ate in silence for a moment.
Outside, Evelyn's garden was grey and quiet in the early morning.
A normal morning.
The kind that had no business existing after yesterday.
"Tell me what you're thinking," Evelyn said.
"I'm thinking Hale didn't call a friend," I said.
"He called someone with a function.
Someone who was supposed to do something if he got arrested."
Evelyn did not disagree.
"A contingency," I said.
"Possibly."
"Aimed at me, or at the company?"
"We don't know yet." She refilled my tea without being asked.
"What I do know is that your security team has been notified, your home system has been upgraded, and you are not going back to that house alone until we have a name."
I nodded.
That was the right answer, and I knew it, and it still made something in me go cold — the understanding that this was not finished simply because Richard was in a cell.
Daniel arrived at ten.
He sat down at Evelyn's kitchen table with his laptop and pulled up a map of San Francisco.
"The forwarding number traces back to a service used by three separate clients in the past eighteen months," he said.
"Two of them are legitimate — a law firm and a private security contractor.
The third registered under a name that doesn't appear in any public record."
"Ghost identity," I said.
"Clean one.
Professionally done." He turned the laptop toward me.
"But the service provider keeps IP logs.
We got a subpoena this morning.
The login that registered the account came from a specific address in Pacific Heights."
He pointed to a street on the map.
I leaned forward.
"Who lives there?"
"The property is owned by a holding company.
The holding company is registered in Delaware.
The registered agent is a law firm." He paused.
"The law firm has represented Hayes Technologies in three separate transactions over the past decade."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Someone inside my company," I said.
"Someone with access to your company's legal history, at minimum.
Someone who knew which firm to use to stay close without being visible." Daniel closed the laptop.
"We don't have a name yet.
But we're close."
I stood up and walked to the window.
Three months of preparation.
Six weeks of Evelyn's careful architecture.
Richard in a cell, Hale in custody in London.
And somewhere in Pacific Heights, someone who had been watching all of it — someone connected to my father's company, to my legal history, to the infrastructure of everything I had built — was sitting in a house that Hale had called this morning before the door closed on him.
"I want to know who it is before they know we're looking," I said.
"That's the plan," Daniel said.
My phone rang.
The number on the screen was my CFO — Thomas Garrett, who had been with Hayes Technologies for eleven years, who had been the one to tell me about Richard's questions regarding the voting shares.
I answered.
"I just heard," Thomas said.
"About Richard.
It's all over the financial news — his name, the arrest, the connection to Hale." A pause.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine.
The baby is fine."
"Good.
That's — good." He sounded genuinely relieved.
Then: "There's something I need to tell you.
Something I probably should have told you sooner." His voice dropped.
"Can we meet today?
In person.
Not at the office."
I looked at Daniel.
He was already writing something on a notepad.
He turned it toward me.
*Ask him where.*
May you like
"Where were you thinking?" I said.
Thomas named a restaurant in Pacific Heights.
