Chapter 6
The list is short — three items. Three things I need to prove or disprove before Victor Shen's deadline:
Item one requires evidence of Nate's state of mind. Hard to prove without confrontation — but not impossible. If he's complicit, there will be digital traces. Emails discussing the arrangement. Texts between him and Marin that reference the payments in ways that acknowledge their nature. Something.
Item three is the one that will tell me everything.
If the money goes from Gallagher Builds to Marin's account and then flows somewhere else — into Nate's personal savings, into a joint hidden account, into real estate they're buying together — then they're co-conspirators.
If the money stays with Marin, she's the sole beneficiary. She's the thief.
I start with the easiest.
The Marlowe Hotel has a loyalty program. I know this because I see the app on Nate's phone sometimes — the little gold icon in his third screen of apps, between his podcast player and his step counter. The Marlowe Rewards. He's a member.
I open the shared password vault. Search: Marlowe.
It's there. Login credentials saved eight months ago. Username: [email protected]. Password saved.
My fingers hesitate over the keyboard. This is a step beyond checking our joint credit card. This is logging into his personal hotel account. If he's booking rooms, I'll see the reservation history. Names. Room numbers. Dates.
I log in.
The dashboard loads. Gold tier member — that means he's stayed enough nights to earn status. The reservation history shows twelve stays in the past eight months. All Tuesday nights. All the same room: 407.
Twelve stays. Not three. The credit card only showed three because I only pulled three months of statements. He's been going since November.
I click into the most recent reservation — last Tuesday. July 8th. The booking shows:
Room 407. 1 guest. Checked in: 6:12 PM. Checked out: 9:47 PM.
One guest listed. But the loyalty program doesn't require the second person's name unless they're checking in separately. He books. She arrives. They leave before ten.
There's one more detail. Under "special requests" for every single booking:
Champagne — Veuve Clicquot, chilled. Please have ready in room upon arrival.
Veuve Clicquot. The same champagne Marin brought to my apartment the night she celebrated her "incorporation." The $90 bottle she bought with money that came from his company.
It's their ritual. Their specific bottle. And she brought it to my kitchen — their champagne, at my table, while I clinked glasses and said congratulations.
I close the browser. I don't need more from The Marlowe. Twelve Tuesdays. Room 407. Veuve every time.
Item two: confirmed. The affair is with Marin.
* * *
"I need your help."
It's 8 PM. The office is empty except for the cleaning crew and Damon, who is exactly where he said he'd be — in his office, two monitors glowing, a stack of printouts beside him with red pen marks in the margins.
His vending machine cup sits on a napkin, half-full of what I can smell from the doorway.
He doesn't look surprised to see me. He just takes off his reading glasses and folds them on the desk.
"Close the door."
I close it. Sit in the chair across from him — the client chair, the one where people usually sit while I explain to them how their husband hid $2 million. Tonight I'm on the other side.
"It's not hypothetical," I say.
"I know." He opens his desk drawer. Pulls out a second vending machine coffee — sealed, purchased in advance, still room temperature. Slides it across the desk toward me.
"You bought this for me."
"Bought it three days ago. Figured you'd show up eventually." He leans back. "Talk."
So I talk. All of it. The anonymous email. The five empty corporate searches. The QuickBooks login. The $141,600 to Marin Voss Associates. The second vendor — Horizon Strategic Partners, H. Voss, $36,800. The hotel charges. The Marlowe loyalty account. Twelve Tuesdays. Room 407. The champagne.
Damon listens without interrupting. His face stays flat — that trained-neutral expression that I imagine served him well across thousands of IRS interviews. When I finish, he's quiet for ten seconds. I count them.
Then he picks up my terrible coffee and slides it closer to me. "Drink."
I crack the seal. Sip. It's exactly as bad as I expected — burnt, metallic, with an aftertaste that tastes like it was filtered through a filing cabinet.
"That's the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth."
"Good. Now you're angry. Angry accountants find more fraud.
" He picks up a red pen. Pulls a blank legal pad from the stack on his desk.
"You know — I had a case at the IRS. 2017.
Pastor in Raleigh. Church collections running through a vendor called 'Holy Ground Landscaping.
' No mower. No truck. Just a checking account and a PO box. "
"How much?"
"Eight hundred thousand over four years.
The congregation was funding the pastor's lake house.
" He draws a circle on the pad. Writes MVA inside it.
"You know what finally tripped him up? He bought a boat and named it the same thing as the vendor.
'Holy Ground.' Painted on the stern. His own parishioner spotted it at the marina. "
"These people always get sloppy."
"No. They always get comfortable. Sloppy is a mistake. Comfortable is a choice. Your friend—" He catches himself. "The hypothetical friend. She's been getting $47K a quarter for seven months. That's past sloppy. That's comfortable."
"Show me the Q3 numbers again," he says, straightening.
I open my laptop. Pull up the screenshots. Turn the screen toward him.
Damon studies them the way I study them — line by line, number by number, looking for the thing that doesn't fit. His red pen taps the pad without writing anything. Thinking.
"The second entity," he says after two full minutes. "Horizon Strategic Partners. H. Voss."
"Marin's mother is Helen Voss."
"Could be." He draws a line on the pad. Two circles connected by it. "Or could be a complete fabrication. You don't need a real person to put initials on a vendor file. You just need initials." He taps the second circle. "What's the routing number on this one?"
I give it to him. He types something into his own laptop — a database I don't have access to, something from his IRS days that he probably shouldn't still have credentials for but does.
"Bayshore Federal Credit Union," he says. "New Jersey. Small institution — $180 million in assets. Community lender. Not the kind of place a legitimate consulting firm banks."
"What kind of place is it?"
"The kind of place someone opens an account with a fake ID and a P.O.
box because the compliance department has three employees.
" He writes something on the pad. I can't read his handwriting — never could.
"If I were building this scheme, I'd have two accounts at two different institutions.
One at a big bank — Chase, in this case — where the primary payments go.
Visible. Normal-looking. And one at a small credit union where the overflow goes.
Harder to trace. Lower reporting thresholds. "
"You think both accounts are Marin's."
"I think both accounts are controlled by the same person. Whether that person is your friend or someone else — the money will tell you." He looks at me over the legal pad. "You need the account records."
"I know."
"You can't get them legally. Not without a subpoena, and you can't file for a subpoena without disclosing the investigation, which means disclosing the conflict, which means—"
"I lose the case."
"You lose more than that." He sets the pen down. "Blair. If McKenna finds out you've been investigating your own husband using firm resources — even on your own time, even on your personal laptop — they'll fire you. You know that."
I know that. I've known it since the moment I opened QuickBooks with Nate's credentials. Every step I've taken since then has been a step toward the end of my career at this firm.
"So what do I do?"
Damon looks at me for a long time. The office is quiet — just the distant hum of the cleaning crew's vacuum and the buzz of the fluorescent above his desk. His terrible coffee sits between us like an offering.
"You build the case with what you can access legally. The QuickBooks data is arguably accessible to you as a spouse — gray area, but defensible. The credit card is joint. The hotel loyalty account is registered to a shared email — also defensible. The corporate searches are public record."
"And the bank records?"
He picks up his pen again. Writes something on the pad. Tears it off. Slides it across the desk.
A phone number. Ten digits. 201 area code — New Jersey.
"Hypothetically," he says, "if someone at Bayshore Federal had questions about suspicious activity in an account receiving large regular deposits from a New York tech company — that might be a conversation their compliance officer would want to have.
Especially if someone brought it to their attention. "
I look at the number. Look at Damon.
"You're telling me to file a SAR tip."
"I'm telling you that any citizen can report suspected fraud to a financial institution's compliance department.
It's not illegal. It's not even unusual.
And if the compliance department investigates and finds something — those records become part of their internal file.
Accessible through proper legal channels later. "
It's elegant. Legal. Slow — but legal. File the tip.
Let the bank investigate. If they find what I think they'll find — $47,200 deposits every quarter from a tech startup, flowing into an account with no business purpose — they'll file their own SAR with FinCEN.
And once a SAR is filed, law enforcement can pull the records without my involvement.
"Thank you," I say.
"For what?" He picks up his terrible coffee. Finishes it in one swallow. "This conversation didn't happen. You were never here. I was reading about tax reform and drinking bad coffee alone, the way I do every night because my ex-wife got the good coffee maker in the divorce."
I laugh. Actually laugh — the first real one in days. It comes out rough and strange and too loud for the empty office.
"Is that why you stay late? The coffee maker?"
"I stay late because this—" he gestures at his monitors, the printouts, the red pen marks "—is easier than going home to an apartment that still has her bookshelf in it.
Empty bookshelf. She took the books. Left the shelf.
" He shrugs. One shoulder. "Furniture you can't get rid of because getting rid of it means admitting she's not coming back to fill it. "
I stare at him. Seven years working ten feet apart and I've never heard him say anything about his personal life beyond "my ex-wife" and a tone that could mean anything.
"Damon."
"Don't." He holds up a hand. "That wasn't a moment. That was context. I'm telling you — when this is over, whatever it looks like, don't keep the bookshelf." He tosses his cup in the trash. "Metaphorically."
"Go home, Gallagher." He stands, stretches — his back cracks twice. "Call that number in the morning. Then wait. Let the system work."
I close my laptop. Stand up. The torn piece of paper goes into my wallet, behind the MetroCard, next to Victor Shen's coffee shop address.
"Damon."
"Yeah?"
"The bad coffee thing. Is it actually true? That it keeps you angry?"
He looks at me with something that might be warmth, if Damon's face did warmth. "No. I just have terrible taste. Don't tell anyone."
I leave his office smiling. It won't last — tomorrow I'll be back in the numbers, back in the timeline, back in the slow accumulation of evidence that's going to end my marriage or expose my best friend or both.
But tonight, walking to the elevator with a torn phone number in my wallet and the worst coffee I've ever tasted still burning in my throat — tonight I feel competent. Seen. Like I'm not doing this alone.
One-two-three-four.
The elevator doors open. I step in. Tomorrow: Bayshore Federal Credit Union. The compliance department. A tip about suspicious activity in an account that shouldn't exist.
The machine starts moving. And I feed it.