Front Page
Friday morning, Naomi's story ran above the fold with a headline that took up half the page: **SIX YEARS, THREE SHELL ACCOUNTS, ONE PENSION FUND: HOW LARKSPUR'S CEO EMPTIED THE TRUST HE PROMISED TO PROTECT.**
Roland read it standing in his kitchen with coffee going cold, his name nowhere in it — *a longtime Larkspur employee, speaking on condition of anonymity* was as close as it came — exactly the way he and Naomi had agreed. Dorothea's name was in it, though, quoted at length, brave in print in a way she'd been afraid to be in a supply closet.
By ten a.m. there were news vans parked outside the Larkspur gates. By noon, employees who'd never once looked up from their workstations were standing in the lobby in clusters, phones out, reading the same story on a hundred different screens.
Roland went in for his shift anyway, because thirty-one years doesn't turn off just because the world does. He stood near the edge of the crowd in the lobby, close enough to hear a woman from accounting say, "I *knew* something felt wrong about that spin-off," and a young engineer say, "Wait, so my dad's pension —" before his voice broke off entirely.
On the plaza outside, Corrigan gave a two-minute statement about "categorically false allegations" that didn't fool a single reporter shouting questions back at him. Priscilla Doyle's firm released a statement within the hour distancing Anchor Bridge from "any prior knowledge of internal Larkspur financial irregularities," which even Roland — a man who'd never taken a business class in his life — recognized as the sound of a rat finding the fastest exit.
He almost let himself believe it was over.
Then a hand closed around his upper arm from behind, firm, official, and a voice said close to his ear:
"Mr. Vasquez. Come with me, please."
He turned, half-braced for Corrigan's security team, half-braced for something worse — and found himself looking at a Larkspur badge he didn't recognize, clipped to a stranger's lanyard, and behind that stranger, three more people in windbreakers stamped with letters that weren't the company's.