Part 2: “I don’t know yet.”

Part 2: “I don’t know yet.”

“You need to find out.”

“That good?”

“No,” James said.

“Not good. Good is teachable. This is alive.”

Victoria looked at the notebook on her coffee table.

“Could it be a book?”

There was a silence.

Then James said, “If there’s more, and if the rest has even half this pulse, it already is one.”

The next morning, Victoria arrived at Caldwell Tower before sunrise.

The lobby guard greeted her with surprise. She ignored it. She went straight to the forty-second floor, entered the break room, made coffee she did not drink, and waited.

At 6:58, the service elevator opened.

Michael Foster stepped out pushing his cart.

He saw her and stopped.

For one suspended second, neither of them spoke.

Then he lowered his eyes the way people do when they are used to being looked past.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said. “I can come back if you need the room.”

Victoria stood with the black notebook in her hand.

“Mr.

His face changed before he could stop it.

A flash of panic. Shame. Anger. Fear.

Then control.

He looked at the notebook. Then at her.

“That’s private,” he said.

“Yes,” Victoria replied. “It is.”

“You read it.”

It was not a question.

She could have lied. She could have softened it. She could have said only a little, just enough to identify the owner, just enough to make herself less guilty.

Instead, she told the truth.

“All of it.”

The room went silent in a way that felt almost physical.

Michael’s hand tightened around the handle of the cleaning cart.

Victoria held the notebook out to him.

“I had no right,” she said. “But I need you to hear this before you decide what to do with me. I thought you were stealing company secrets.”

His eyebrows drew together. “What?”

“And then?”