Chapter 11 - Nobody Goes Alone
"You're not going," I said.
Jonah was already pulling on his jacket. "I want to hear her say it to my face."
"That's what she wants."
His hands stopped moving. Now I was asking him to trust me at the exact moment I'd finally learned how badly I'd failed him.
"Then what do we do?" he asked.
"We call Bell."
Detective Bell read Audrey's message and asked Jonah to forward it without deleting anything. She took the threat seriously. Officers checked the boathouse while Jonah stayed at the hospital. Through a window they saw a woman stuffing papers into a shredder. She wasn't Audrey.
Her name was Sonia Park, thirty-four, an office coordinator who had worked for us since before my accident. Bell interviewed her after officers obtained access and preserved the records through the investigation.
Sonia had watched the dock's live camera feed from Audrey's office on Thursday. Audrey told her a financing partner needed confirmation that Pier Six was empty. When Sonia saw my chair move toward the water, she froze.
"I didn't know what I was looking at," she told Bell. "I thought it couldn't be happening."
She showed the detective a text she had been instructed to send: PIER SIX CLEAR. It went to a number listed in company records under Harlan Pike's development group.
"Why were you shredding documents?" Bell asked.
Sonia's face crumpled. "Audrey told me to destroy the duplicate invoices. I knew it was wrong. I thought if I did what she said, she'd leave my family alone."
Sonia agreed to surrender her work phone and tell investigators everything she knew. She didn't ask for praise. She kept asking if she'd lose her apartment when she lost her job.
When Bell called me, I thought of all the people who'd been frightened into silence while I signed annual reports and told myself the company was fine.
Jonah listened on speakerphone.
"There's one more thing," Bell said. "The number Sonia texted was active on the dock the night you went into the lake."
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"Was Pike there?" I asked.
"We're checking. But we now have reason to believe someone planned what happened before you reached Pier Six."
