Project Anvil

He made it into the supply closet with two seconds to spare, easing the door shut on a bucket that sloshed like it wanted to give him away.

Footsteps passed close enough that he could hear the woman's heels stop just outside.

"Probably the cleaning guy," she said. "Forget it, Thaddeus. We're already late for Anchor Bridge's counsel."

"Fine." A pause. "But nobody sees that folder until Friday."

The elevator chimed. Doors closed. Silence settled back over the fourteenth floor like dust.

Roland counted to sixty before he came out. He told himself he was going to finish his rounds and go home and forget every word of it. He told himself that walking back toward Boardroom 1408 wasn't a decision, exactly — more like his feet not asking permission.

The door was open a crack, the way people leave things when they're already thinking about their next meeting. He nudged it wider with his elbow, the way you'd check a hospital room, not wanting to be the one who woke someone up.

The folder was still on the table. CONFIDENTIAL — PROJECT ANVIL, stamped in red across the tab.

He wasn't a man who read finance for fun, but thirty-one years of picking dropped paperwork out of executive wastebaskets teaches you to recognize a pension statement when you see one. This one had his late wife's plan number on the header. And a column of dates that went back further than any restructuring — six years further — next to a line item that just said *reallocated*.

His phone was already out, camera up, hands shaking enough that the first shot came out blurred.

The elevator chimed again.

He froze, phone still raised, as a voice — hers — carried down the hall, closer than it had any right to be:

"I left my phone in there."