CHAPTER 23 Reid
Reid
He wasn't sure how the call ended.
There had been words after—hers, maybe his—but all he held onto was that word.
Divorce
Reid became aware, slowly, that he was still holding his phone.
He set it on the desk.
Around him, the office continued. Brian's chair squeaked as he shifted his weight, Wilson typed, Diane tapped her foot.
Reid looked at his screen without seeing it.
Divorce.
He had been so certain he was going to undo everything, clear her name, welcome her back home.
He was a fucking idiot.
Why would she ever want to stay married to him? He’d tricked her into it once. Somehow she’d agreed to marry him. Why would she still stick around after what he’d done to her?
Reid pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose.
He thought about the morning she'd come home from the holding cell. The way she'd looked standing there with the plastic bag of belongings in one hand, her eyes still looking to him for something. An explanation, a reason, something that would make it make sense.
Instead he had thrown her out of her own home.
The office work continued around him.
Reid looked down at his hands. At the wedding ring on his finger.
He had left his wife in a cell. He had packed her suitcase. He had shut the door in her face.
He thought about Maya's expression when he'd stepped on the stage. He'd told himself it was his responsibility. He’d told himself he was being principled.
It hadn't been principles.
It had been stupidity.
A shadow fell across his desk.
"Tough day?"
Reid stood up so abruptly that his chair went skidding backward.
One second Julian was standing there and the next Reid's fist connected with his jaw and Julian went sideways into the desk, scattering papers, grabbing at the edge to catch himself.
Diane was on her feet. Brian and Wilson had him by the arms, dragging him back. Reid pulled against them without thinking, his whole body leaning toward Julian, and they had to plant their feet and use their full weight to hold him back.
He wanted to hit him again. To wipe that expression off his face. To keep going until—
His chest was heaving, eyes still fixed on Julian. Julian who had sat in his kitchen. Who had stolen from his wife and then set her up to take the fall. Now he had a visitor lanyard around his neck and the imprint of Reid’s fist in his face.
"You framed her," Reid said.
Julian froze. "Reid—"
"You framed her," Reid said again. “She’s innocent.”
Julian held out his hands. “Calm down, buddy. You're not thinking clearly—"
"You sat in my house." The words came out hard. "You ate dinner at my table. You volunteered to help her. And then you stole from her."
Julian’s expression was hardening now, the play-acted sympathy evaporating. "You need to be very careful—"
"She spent a weekend in a cell." Reid's voice was rising. "Because of you."
"Because of you," Julian replied sharply. "You're the one who arrested her.”
Reid pulled harder against the grip holding him back.
"You did that," Julian said. "Not me." And then he smiled.
Reid’s vision narrowed, the edges of the room dimming until there was only Julian’s face, that mocking smile.
Reid had never punched anyone before. He hadn’t known how good it could feel. He felt Wilson and Brian brace themselves as he strained against their hold.
"You're right," Reid spat the words out at him. "I did put the handcuffs on her." He held Julian's gaze. "But you built the trap. And I am going to spend every day until you are convicted making sure everyone knows it."
Sullivan appeared in the doorway of her office.
The look on her face told him everything he needed to know about what came next.
“Lawson! This is completely unacceptable.”
"I'll go,” he said to Sullivan.
“You’re suspended without pay. Don’t come back for a week,” she told him.
IRS agents were not supposed to throw punches in the middle of the office. Especially not at civilian accountants. Especially not while accusing them of framing their wife.
Brian slowly released his arm. Wilson did the same a second later, reluctant, like they expected Reid to lunge again.
He didn’t. The mindless rage had burned through him, leaving something colder behind.
Julian was straightening his tie. He pressed one hand to his jaw. His expensive suit was wrinkled now and there was blood at the corner of his mouth.
Reid felt a grim satisfaction looking at it.
Sullivan pointed toward the elevators. “Go home, Lawson.”
Home.
The word hit strangely.
Reid bent and righted his chair mechanically.
Every nearby department had noticed the commotion. Heads were lifted over cubicle walls. People stood gaping at him beside printers and coffee machines.
Reid hated being watched. He didn’t make scenes. He didn’t spill his private life into public spaces.
And now the entire office had just watched him lose control completely.
Nobody spoke as he collected his jacket. Around him, people were staring. Reid could feel it everywhere.
The fraud investigator whose wife had been framed for financial crimes.
The husband who had publicly arrested an innocent woman.
The idiot who hadn’t seen what was right in front of him until after she’d spent a weekend in a jail cell.
He deserved every pair of eyes on him right now. Not because he’d hit Julian. That was almost incidental compared to the rest of it.
No, the real humiliation sat deeper than that. Worse than professional embarrassment. Worse than suspension.
He had failed at the two things that mattered most to him.
He had been bad at his job.
And worse as a husband.
The mirrored walls of the elevator threw his reflection back at him. Disheveled suit, blood on his knuckles.
He looked like a man coming apart.
The diner was three blocks from the office. Reid sat in the back booth with his bruised hand wrapped around a mug he hadn’t drunk from.
Diane slid into the seat across from him, followed by Brian. Wilson slid into the seat next to Reid.
“You’re an idiot,” Diane said.
Reid knew that already. “I need to clear her name.”
Brian leaned in, became focused. “Walk us through it,” he said.
Reid looked down at the coffee. “Julian Cross framed my wife,” he said. “I trusted him. I recommended him.”
Diane’s mouth tightened. “And you took his word over hers.”
“Yes,” Reid said.
The word scraped on the way out.
Accountants were supposed to be trustworthy. Accountants were supposed to be held to a higher standard. But anyone could steal, anyone could commit fraud. Why hadn’t Reid realized immediately that Julian was the one who had stolen the money?
Because he was messed up. Maya deserved better that someone like that. But he couldn’t think about that right now.
He leaned back against the cracked vinyl seat. “If he’s stealing from a charity, he’s probably stealing from someone else.”
Brian nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
“How do we get proof?” Diane asked.
Reid knew how to build a case. He also knew how long it took. But Reid didn’t need to build this case.
“We don’t need proof,” Reid said. “The allegation will be enough. His company will investigate him for us.”
No board wanted to hear that the CEO ignored a warning about a senior accountant with access to client money. No compliance officer wanted to explain why they let him stay in the system after an allegation. No insurer wanted that paper trail.
Julian did not need to be charged for his boss to act. He only needed to become a risk.
Brian let out a low breath. “He’ll be walked out immediately. If he’s dirty, he won’t be able to cover his tracks.”
Every person at this table knew how the world of finance worked. Accountants didn’t take long vacations as a perk. It was a system built to catch fraud.
It was easy to hide theft with uninterrupted access to the records. But force that person away from their desk—have another set of eyes balance the books every year—and the crimes would be exposed.
“If he’d been skimming,” Reid said, “they’ll catch it.”
He would use the law to bring Julian down, but committing a crime was not why Reid was going after him. It was because he’d hurt Maya.
Maya was still being told to confess to something she had not done. And Julian was still walking around with nothing worse than a bruised jaw.
But now Reid had something that was not grief and not rage. He had a plan.
Reid stepped out of the diner and into the noise of the city.
The city was loud and indifferent around him. The light changed and the crowd surged forward.
Aren't we getting a divorce?
Reid shook out his hand, it was beginning to ache from where he’s smashed it into Julian’s face. He liked the reminder of that moment.
He had believed in the clean, hard line between right and wrong. And he’d looked to the law to draw that line.
You followed it, you trusted it, and in return, it delivered certainty.
He had built his entire life on that belief.
He believed in the law above all else. He loved the law above all else.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
Maya’s face flashed in his mind again.
Maya, who forced him out of his solitary existence and into block parties and committee meetings and conversations over hedges, smiling at him like he was not awkward and grim and terrible at all of it. Maya who made him a better man.
Reid’s jaw tightened.
He didn’t need the law. There was a better guiding principle to follow. And that was Maya.
She was stubborn and generous and maddening. And she was correct, every time.
He loved his job because it told him what was right and what was wrong, but Maya could tell him that.
People moved around him, the city carrying on as if nothing had shifted.
But something had.
Something fundamental.
He had been working from the premise that the law was the most important thing to him. But that wasn’t true.
Maya was what mattered.
Everything else—
The process, the procedure, the rules he had followed so rigidly they had become indistinguishable from who he was—
All of it was secondary.
He had treated it like the foundation.
It wasn’t.
The noise of the street came back into focus around him—the traffic, the voices, the distant wail of a siren.