Adrienne Cole was already on the treadmill when Maxwell walked through the gym door, his tablet perched on the console and his reading glasses tucked into his hair instead of his face, meaning any evidence she'd been gathering that morning had vanished.
Before she reached the pull-up bar, she saw him reflected in the wall mirror. "Your knee's fine," he said without turning around. "If you were monitoring it."
"I wasn't monitoring it."
"Of course you were." He looked away. "How's your leg? The one I attacked with a water bottle."
"It's fine."
"Fine. I wouldn't want to get sued by a man who corrects strangers' squat technique without asking." He slowed the treadmill, stepped off, and dried his neck with a towel. A closer look revealed an alert, slightly amused expression, like someone who'd downed two cups of coffee and was looking for something more entertaining than cardio. "You seem to have a legal question. You have a lovely face." Maxwell thought about it for a second. He'd been thinking about asking this on the lakeside path Sunday morning, changing his words the way he tends to change anything in an instant. "Suppose," he said. "If someone feels they're being watched. Not threatened, but watched. No notes, no contact, no demands. Just watched, more than once, by people who don't want to be noticed. What can be done legally about it before it becomes a police matter?" Something changed in his gaze: a case-taking look, the kind he probably gave to real clients in real conference rooms. "Define 'suppose.'" "Suppose." He let the sentence linger exactly as long as he'd let his pause linger a few moments before, which he noticed. You can hire a licensed private investigator to confirm and document it; it's legal and the right first step because it gives you something concrete rather than just a hunch. If it's your property or a common area of your building, you can review the security footage; you have the right to do so. What you can't do is confront them directly without creating legal problems for yourself, and you shouldn't go to the police based on a mere hunch and two visits; they'll open a file and do nothing about it, and there you have a file. She looked at him. Is it the client's or yours?
Hypothetical.
Hmm. He reached for his bag. If it's no longer hypothetical, you have my card. He paused and then, with the same dry precision I'd come to expect from her: And if you murder someone, I won't represent you. Civil litigation. A completely different department from criminal.
Understood.
Before I could decide whether she was joking or not, she left.
He sent Reinhardt's proposal at 8:17 a.m.
Fifteen pages, copied to Hartwell as instructed on Friday, dated, and with the email subject line clear and correct: Reinhardt Logistics GmbH Pacific Northwest Corridor Expansion Draft for Review. He kept a copy in two encrypted locations and a third, unencrypted, printed, and dated copy in a folder in his desk drawer precisely for this purpose: to one day prove with a dated document who had done the work.
Hartwell finished reading it at 10:00 a.m. Maxwell knew this because Hartwell's office door, visible from the right angle from his desk, remained closed for 40 minutes longer than Hartwell spent on most things and exactly the time it took for someone to properly read fifteen pages of a dense logistics model.
At 11:02 a.m., Greg Paulson walked into the office without knocking. Maxwell watched everything from the side: the door opening, Greg's back disappearing behind it, and the door closing again. Eleven minutes. He couldn't hear anything through the glass, but he didn't need to. He'd recorded so many of Greg's conversations over fourteen months that he could picture the man leaving: his shoulders an inch higher than usual, his chin tucked in as if someone had snatched something he'd come to get.
Greg didn't look at Maxwell as he returned to his desk. That was information, too. Screen checks were always accompanied by a glance. This time, there wasn't even a glance.
Sarah leaned into the gap between their desks, her voice still steady. "What was that?"
"I don't know yet."
"You always know."
"I guess so."
"What is it?" Maxwell glanced at Hartwell's closed door, which was now opening again. Hartwell himself went outside to refill his coffee, looking relaxed, as if someone had just made a decision that made him feel good. "Greg's about to discover that the Reinhardt Expansion is a fifteen-page document where his name isn't listed anywhere," Maxwell said. "And he's going to fix it."
Sarah pursed her lips, not in surprise, but in recognition. "He asked Hartwell to be co-director."
"I'm guessing so."
"Why? He's never spoken to Werner. He doesn't know the broker's data. He can't justify a single figure in that proposal if you ask him."
"He doesn't need to justify it. He wants his name on the cover." Maxwell looked back at the screen. "The reason is seniority. The senior coordinator holds a higher position than I do on paper. It's such an important matter, with an external perspective, a multinational client… Hartwell can add senior oversight as part of standard risk management. It'll look perfect in a meeting."
"That's crazy!"
"That's not crazy. It's smart, if you don't care whether it's true or not," he continued typing. "I sent that proposal with a copy, dated, and every cell had a name and date in the backup workbook. If Greg tries to claim he led it, something else will be written down before he finishes the sentence."
Sarah looked at him for a moment; a reader's look, only this time there was something beyond her attempt to solve the puzzle. It looked concerned for a moment. "You knew this was going to happen."
"I figured. There's a difference. Now I know."
He said nothing more. He went back to his screen. But he didn't completely relax for the rest of the morning, and Maxwell noticed that too.
Nate called at 6:40, while Maxwell was grilling chicken in the kitchen on Lake Shore Drive.
"Okay, I called Walgreens."
"So?"
"So?" I asked for Patrice, and the person who answered said, "Which one?" And Maxwell, there are two Patrices at that Walgreens, and I didn't know who had said she had good energy, so I panicked and hung up.
Maxwell put down the frying pan. "You hung up."
"I panicked."
"Call back. Ask the pharmacy technician, not the cashier. Twenty-something, black hair. That's all you need."
A long pause. "...That's excellent advice."
"Call her tonight."
"Tonight? Maxwell, I just..."
"Tonight, Nat."
A sigh, and then, reluctantly, "Okay. Okay! That's it. I'll let you know how it goes." A heartbeat. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Okay. Goodbye. Wish me luck. Also tell your dad that Engine 14 says, 'Hey, Patrick told me to tell you to tell him, I honestly don't know why.'"
He hung up before Maxwell could ask.
Maxwell finished the chicken. He ate it at the bar, overlooking a lake that had turned leaden in the darkness, and the system rang a bell between the second and third bites.
[Hidden Reward Unlocked]
[Condition: 21 times in a row Professional Composer held for misattribution]
[Zero visible frustration. Zero changes. Zero compromise on work quality.]
[Reward: 700 shares NIKE, INC.] (NYSE: NKE)
[Price, March 19, 2012: $106.48/share]
[Total Value: $74,536]
[Taxes: Handled by Ascent Protocol.] Host Liability: $0.00
[Deposit: Fidelity Account -4471] He read it. He finished dinner. He washed the pan.
Greg Paulson went into an office for eleven minutes and came out with something. Maxwell still didn't know exactly what it was. He would tell him on Wednesday, maybe even sooner.
He wasn't worried. Anxiety was a reaction to uncertainty, and Maxwell wasn't sure. He had already put the next step in writing before anyone else could.