Mark stood outside, a mug in his hand. He'd frozen as if about to take a step back when our eyes met through the thin crack.
“Stella?” he asked. “Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm a little early, but I was worried. Are you—”
I reached out and pulled the door open further. Cold wind raced past him, shocking me. He straightened, hot chocolate in hand. His gaze hadn't left my tear-stained cheeks. The fact that I looked like a mess didn't even matter.
“Stella?”
With a wave, I beckoned him inside.
“C'mon.” I folded a jacket more tightly against me. “I have some explaining to do.”
8 Mark
We sat on the floor, our backs braced against the twin bed that Lizbeth had replaced the old metal cot with a few months ago.
The wooden floor was creaky and cold, but the fire I'd prodded back to life was crackling fast now. The heat came with it, filling the small space almost instantly. Stella stared at the flames with the dazed, exhausted expression of someone that had just been through hell. Night had fallen, and with it came a massive drop in temperature. The wind brushed by outside, heralded by rain on her windows. She'd drawn the blinds, but the plunk plunk left no doubt.
“Three weeks ago,” she said suddenly, breaking apart the quiet, “I went to work just like any other day. Sat at my desk and answered some emails. Joshua, one of my supervisors, brought some paperwork by and said some of our smaller companies needed to file for government assistance.” She waved an airy hand. “Nothing massive, but it seemed odd that there were so many to fill out.”
A dark feeling started in my chest then, and I could already see where this went. I stayed silent, however, and listened while we both stared at the fire. Several inches remained between our shoulders, but the cozy cabin felt intimate all the same.
“Anyway, I decided to look into the companies because some of the paperwork didn't quite line up. Eventually, I discovered that the companies weren't real. They were fake. Joshua wanted me to obtain government assistance for businesses that didn't exist.”
“Money laundering,” I murmured.
Dejected, she nodded. When she took a sip of the hot chocolate, her eyes closed briefly while she savored it. I fought back an exultant shout. It had taken me five tries to make a single mug of “real” hot chocolate off a googled recipe. The previous four had been disgusting. She had another sip before she continued.
“Once I realized that it wasn't some fluke, of course, it wasn't, but I kind of wanted it to be, I wasn't sure what to do. For a few days, I just kept going to work and pretending everything was fine. Joshua checked on me daily but he had always done that. Always been . . . too attentive.”
My body immediately tensed, but she didn't notice. Just kept speaking, every now and then tucking a piece of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture.
“Joshua didn't seem overly suspicious of my behavior and didn't ask about the applications much. But there was . . . something there. So I just tried to figure out what to do and how to gain the evidence.
“By the end of the week, I felt like I had all the proof I needed. So I stayed late, cleaned out the important things at my desk, erased everything that could show my deep research off my computer, and met with a woman named Anya. A federal investigator. I gave her everything.”
I whistled low. She snorted.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “Real brave, wasn't it? I ditched all the evidence, called in sick the next morning, and requested a three-week sabbatical to go on a retreat to Canada with a friend. Since I'd left a few things there, no one thought anything of it, I would imagine. I didn't have friends at work to notice, anyway. Joshua's attention was an effective isolator. That night, I packed up all the important things at my apartment. An old college friend of mine had been crashing at my place for a few days and wanted the lease. I signed it over and left.”
My eyebrows rose. “Left left?”
“Left left,” she repeated with a little twitch of her lip. Like she wanted to be amused, but the reality was just too ugly. “My furniture was minimal anyway. I didn't really . . . I didn't really live in my place.” She frowned, running the tip of her finger along the top of her mug. “I worked a lot. Shayna bought all my furniture and plates and that stuff for $2,000. I packed up my car and drove away.”
“To here?”
She hesitated, chewing her bottom lip. “To here,” she said without looking at me. “I needed someplace to hide. Eventually, Joshua would figure out I wasn't coming back and maybe even realize I was the whistleblower. I thought about buying an RV and just driving around the country, but . . .”
She trailed off.
I leaned my head back against her mattress as I tried to comprehend all she'd revealed. Of course, she'd been running from something. That much had been obvious from the moment that she showed up. But this wasn't what I had expected.
She sighed heavily.
“Then,” she muttered, “today happened.”
While she explained the text messages she'd received and the calls that dipwad Joshua made to her clients—which call I never got, but calls rarely come through here—my mind raced.
She was good and stuck.
“Joshua is in love with you?” I ventured carefully.
She sighed. “I guess? If that's called love. He's married. But ever since I started the job, he's made it very clear that he's interested in me. At first, it was subtle and not a big deal, but it's grown in the last year. If I hadn't found the fraud, I probably wouldn't have quit. But his attention .
