The Son

I found Holden Thorne in the executive kitchen, the one with the good coffee machine that only the top floor got to use, and I didn't bother easing into it.

"Did you send me an email yesterday?"

He turned, mug half-raised. "What?"

"An anonymous email. Telling me to stop digging into the past." I watched his face carefully. "You have access to employee personal records. You're the only person in this building with both motive and the keys."

Holden set his mug down slowly. He had his father's silver-blue eyes, but none of the ease that came with them — his suit always looked one size wrong, like he was still growing into the role someone had handed him.

"I didn't send that," he said. "But I think I know who did."

"Douglas."

"He's been jumpy for weeks. Ever since some old woman called the office asking to speak with my father directly." Holden rubbed a hand over his face. "Look. Can we talk somewhere that isn't a kitchen with three cameras in it?"

We ended up on the fire escape, wind cutting through my blazer, forty feet above the parking lot.

"I grew up hearing the garage story a thousand times," Holden said. "Two hundred dollars, folding table, self-made man. I used to be proud of it." He looked out at the skyline instead of at me. "Then a few years ago I found a box in my dad's study. Old photos. A man I didn't recognize, standing right next to my father like they were brothers. I asked him who it was and he told me to mind my own business. That's not something my father says. Ever."

"That man was my father," I said quietly.

Holden nodded, like some part of him had already guessed.

"There's a locked file cabinet in his private office," he said. "Fireproof. He's had it since before I was born, and I've never seen inside it. I think whatever's real — the actual founding papers, whatever your family's owed — it's in there."

"Can you get it open?"

"Maybe. But there's a problem." Holden checked his watch, jaw tight. "The company gala is in two days. My father's unveiling a bronze plaque with his story engraved on it — self-made, from nothing — permanent, in the new lobby, in front of every investor and every reporter he could invite."

Wind rattled the fire escape grate under our feet.

"After that plaque goes up," Holden said, "no one will ever question the story again."