Chapter 5: What Dana Had
I did not go to Diane's house.
Not yet.
I sat in a coffee shop three blocks from the parking garage, at a corner table facing the door, and I stared at Dana Vale's message for eleven minutes before I called Patricia back.
"She wants to meet," I said.
"She says she has something Owen doesn't know about."
"Absolutely not.
Not without me present."
"Can you be available this afternoon?"
A pause.
"You're seriously considering this."
"She said I'm not the first.
If she has proof of a pattern — another woman, another contract, another folder on another nightstand — that's not just useful to me.
That's useful to Halcyon.
That's useful to every company that lost a bid to Vantage."
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"If Dana has documentation and she's willing to hand it over, she may be trying to protect herself.
She may have realized she's exposed."
"Or Owen told her something she didn't expect and now she's angry."
"Either way, she's not your ally.
She's a witness with her own interests."
"I know what she is," I said.
"I also know what she might have."
Patricia agreed to a 2 p.m.
meeting at her office.
I texted Dana the address and nothing else.
Dana replied in under a minute: *"I'll be there."*
I ordered coffee I didn't drink and waited.
Dana arrived seven minutes late.
She had changed clothes since the bedroom — she was in a grey blazer now, her hair pulled back, the silk robe a different lifetime.
She looked at Patricia first, then at me.
She sat down without being invited.
"I want immunity," she said.
Patricia's pen didn't move.
"You're not in a position to negotiate immunity.
That's a prosecutor's decision, not mine."
"Then I want it on record that I cooperated."
"That I can do.
Start talking."
Dana set her phone on the table, screen up.
She opened a folder of screenshots — text messages, photographs of documents, two short videos.
She slid the phone toward Patricia without looking at me.
"Owen and I have been involved for fourteen months," she said.
"He told me his marriage was over.
He told me you had been separated for two years and were only staying together for financial reasons."
I said nothing.
The coffee cup was warm under my hands.
"Three months in, he started sharing information.
Not the full folders — just enough.
Which criteria mattered.
Which evaluators were soft on certain technical specs.
He framed it as pillow talk.
Like he was just venting about work."
"But you used it," Patricia said.
"My company used it.
I passed it to our technical team.
I told them I had a source.
I didn't tell them who."
"Did your company know the source was the procurement VP?"
Dana's jaw tightened.
"Our CEO knew.
Eventually."
Patricia wrote something.
"And Renata?"
Dana looked up sharply.
Her eyes moved to me for the first time.
"You know about Renata."
"We know the name," I said.
"Tell me the rest."
Dana picked up her phone and opened a different folder.
She turned the screen toward me.
It was a photograph — a woman in her late thirties, dark hair, standing outside what looked like a hotel conference center.
Beside her, unmistakably, was Owen.
His hand was at the small of her back.
"Renata Szabo," Dana said.
"She was a logistics rep.
Owen had the same arrangement with her two years before me.
She didn't know about me.
I didn't know about her until four months ago, when I found an old email thread on his laptop."
"What happened to her?" I asked.
"She ended it when she found out he was still married.
She thought — like me — that the separation was real." Dana's voice didn't waver, but something behind her eyes did.
"She also passed information.
Her company won two contracts before the relationship ended.
Both contracts were later absorbed by Vantage when her company couldn't fulfill the volume."
"Owen arranged that," Patricia said.
It was not a question.
"He tanked her company's performance reviews after she ended things with him.
I found the internal memos.
He scored them out of compliance on a routine audit.
They lost their certification.
Vantage stepped in."
The room was very quiet.
"He punished her," I said.
"Yes."
I looked at the photograph on Dana's phone.
Renata Szabo, standing outside a hotel, with Owen's hand on her back and no idea what was coming.
"Where is she now?" I asked.
"She runs a small freight operation in Ohio.
Much smaller than before." Dana paused.
"She'll talk to you.
I already asked her."
Patricia set her pen down.
"You contacted her before this meeting."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Dana looked at me then.
Directly.
For the first time since she had walked in, she looked like someone who understood exactly what she had done and had decided to stop pretending otherwise.
"Because he told me the same things he told her," she said.
"And I believed him.
And I helped him.
And I watched what he did to her company after she said no." She picked up her phone.
"And then last night, after you left, he opened the champagne and he toasted to — " she stopped.
"He said, and I'm quoting, 'To women who finally learn their place.'"
I heard Patricia's pen click once.
"I want that on the record too," I said.
"It will be," Patricia said.
She looked at Dana.
"I need copies of everything on that phone.
Every screenshot, every document, every photograph.
Today."
Dana slid the phone across the table without hesitation.
May you like
Outside, Owen was somewhere in the city, certain he had already won.
He did not know that the two women he had used most were sitting in the same room, and one of them had just handed over everything.
