Amanda Cross called at 7:31 AM.
I was at the office — I'd been there since seven, which was normal for trial prep but somewhat obsessive for a Monday with no trial. The Forstman file had been open on my desk since the previous Thursday when a second shell company appeared in TechVista's shareholder registry under a slightly different name but the same beneficial ownership trail. I'd been adding to the file rather than waiting to be called.
The call preempted my next step by about forty-five minutes.
"Someone's buying us," Amanda said. She had the particular quality of controlled fury — the voice of a person who had processed past shock into clarity. "Not publicly. Shell companies, nominee accounts, a Delaware holding structure that took our CFO three days to trace. But it's there. Eleven percent of TechVista shares acquired in the last three months through four separate entities."
"All tracing to the same beneficial owner," I said.
A brief silence. "You already know."
"I was warned this was coming. Not how fast." I pulled the Forstman file up on my screen. "Charles Forstman."
"Yes." She exhaled — not relief, the sound of a suspicion confirmed. "Who warned you?"
"Someone with visibility into the New York corporate landscape who wanted the right people to be watching." Not a full answer, but an honest one. "Amanda, I need to ask you some questions about TechVista's debt structure. Specifically your credit facility and covenant terms."
"Why?"
"Because the share accumulation isn't the attack. It's the preparation for the attack."
I walked her through what the System had surfaced during the past week's analysis. Forstman's pattern: accumulate quietly, build enough position to create noise, then apply pressure to the company's lenders to trigger a debt covenant review. Not breach — just review, which introduced uncertainty, which triggered the institutional investor anxiety that made the stock volatile, which made the board nervous. And a nervous board was a board that entertained buyout offers they'd have rejected six months earlier.
[ Argument Crusher: Forstman attack sequence — step 2 probability. TechVista covenant vulnerability: debt-to-equity ratio 2.3x. Covenant trigger threshold: 2.5x. Margin: 8.7%. Lender pressure required to trigger review: moderate. Timeline to potential breach: 45-60 days under adverse pressure. ]
"He doesn't need to own you," I said. "He needs the board to think selling is safer than fighting. And he creates that impression by making the alternative look expensive and uncertain."
Amanda was quiet for a moment. "Can you stop him?"
I looked at the number I'd been carrying for three days.
"Alone? Thirty-eight percent probability." I paused. "But I'm not planning to do this alone."
Zane was in the building by nine.
I'd sent him a meeting request at 7:45 with the subject line TechVista — urgent briefing and the brief note: Forstman moving. Need your read on coordination strategy. Zane didn't send unnecessary follow-up. He just appeared.
He sat across from my desk and read the file I'd assembled, the way he read everything — thoroughly and without commentary until he was finished. Eight minutes. He set the last page down and looked at me.
"Three targets," he said.
"Simultaneous. TechVista here, Gillis Industries which I believe is a PSL client, and Waverly Partners — I don't have confirmation on their representation yet." I leaned forward. "His whole pattern depends on each firm defending its client in isolation. Each lawyer thinking they're fighting a specific attack on a specific company, not seeing the coordinated play."
"If the defenders compare notes—"
"His leverage collapses. The lender relationships only work if he can pressure them without anyone connecting the simultaneous attempts. The shell companies only work if no one's cross-referencing the beneficial ownership trails." I paused. "This is the move. Not the individual cases. The isolation."
Zane absorbed this. He had the particular stillness of someone with thirty years of experience, the kind of stillness that came from having seen enough situations to know which ones required urgency and which required thought. This one required both.
"Gillis Industries," he said. "If that's a PSL client—"
"Harvey."
"You're going to call Harvey Specter."
"The Win Rate without coordination is 38%," I said. "With it, 67%. The delta is Harvey."
[ Win Rate Calculator: Forstman — coordinated defense scenario. Variables: intelligence sharing (high value), lender network mapping (combined access expands coverage), litigation coordination (potential joint motion capability). Probability uplift from 38% to 67%: confirmed. ]
Zane looked at me for a long moment.
"This firm has competed with Pearson Specter Litt on eight cases in the past two years," he said. "You've been on opposite sides of most of them."
"Yes."
"And you're proposing to call Harvey Specter and ask him to work with you."
"I'm proposing to call Harvey Specter and explain the situation. Whether he works with me depends on whether he sees the math the same way I do." I paused. "He will. Harvey's flaws are relational, not analytical. He'll understand the case for cooperation before I finish the first paragraph."
Zane was quiet for another moment.
"Do it," he said. "But do it carefully. Harvey will need to feel like it's collaboration, not recruitment. You're not asking him to work for you or under you. You're asking him to work beside you."
"I know."
"And Scott." He met my eyes. "This is a big move. If it works, it changes how you relate to PSL going forward. Not adversarial — something more complicated than adversarial. Are you ready for that?"
I thought about the path note.
The strongest players are the ones who make the board better for everyone on it.
"I think I've been building toward this longer than I realized," I said.
Zane nodded once. "Make the call."
I spent an hour preparing.
Not the call itself — Harvey wouldn't respond well to a presentation, and anyway the situation was simple enough that it didn't need one. I prepared myself. The framing. The tone. The specific request I was making and what it wasn't.
I was not asking Harvey Specter for help. That dynamic would end the conversation before it started.
I was identifying a situation in which two skilled attorneys had adjacent information that, combined, would let them defend their respective clients against a common threat. I was proposing an information exchange. I was doing it because the math required it and because Jessica's warning, delivered over a Barolo at Del Posto, had been given in the same spirit.
Cooperation over isolation.
I called Donna at five PM before I made the call.
"I need to talk something through."
She listened. She asked two questions, both precise. Then she said: "You're asking if it's going to be weird."
"I'm asking if it's possible."
A pause. "Harvey respects competence more than comfort. He always has. The moment you show him the math he'll see why it makes sense." Another pause. "And Scott — he's already been moving toward you. Slowly, in his way, but he has. The gallery during your closing wasn't an accident."
"No. It wasn't."
"So call him. The weird part will last about forty-five seconds and then he'll be Harvey Specter focused on a problem, and that's the version of him that cooperates."
She was right. She was usually right about the people she'd spent twelve years studying.
I dialed Harvey's direct line at 5:47 PM.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
On the fourth ring, I briefly entertained the possibility that he wasn't going to pick up, and what that meant, and whether I should leave a voicemail, and whether a voicemail was actually—
"Roden."
One word. My name, with his inflection — the particular combination of recognition and wariness and the thing underneath both of them that had been building since a back-row seat in a courtroom during a closing argument.
"Harvey." I took a breath. "I need to talk to you about Charles Forstman. I have intelligence you need, and I believe you have intelligence I need."
A pause. Shorter than I expected.
"My office," Harvey said. "Tomorrow. Seven AM."
He hung up.
I looked at the phone in my hand. Then at the Forstman file on my desk, the shell company registry, the lender relationship map, the three company names on a piece of paper that Jessica Pearson had folded and pushed across a restaurant table because she believed cooperation was worth more than competitive advantage.
Seven AM.
The line between competition and collaboration was dissolving in real time, and Scott Roden was the one dissolving it.
I picked up the Forstman file and started preparing for a meeting that would change what it meant to practice law in this city.
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