He buried the wrong man

Chapter 2: The first lie that I told him

Thane didn't sleep. He knew the outline of what would happen in the next hour by the time the sky over the water was black and bruised grey, and in none of that hour was there a moment when he told Desmond the truth.

Back into the city, his badge still working and his name was still pristine, four years of ruin crumbled in there somewhere no scanner could reach. Nothing had changed, Halcyon Pictures looked just as it had the night before before it all fell apart, glass towers catching the early sun, grip trucks already rolling on the lot, the whole machine running just as if nothing in the world had ever gone wrong here.

He had barely gotten out of the elevator when his assistant caught him.

“You're looking terrible" she said.

"Long night."

“Desmond asked twice about the Ellery renewal; I told him you're in the process of finalizing details.”

“That's good. Keep telling him that.”

She frowned and looked down at his face as if she was trying to read what was beneath it. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine." The lie flowed easily and it was much smoother than it should have been. He was going to have to get used to that. “Just want to be thorough, big year coming up, can't afford sloppy paperwork.”

It was not a mess of papers. It was the first domino in what will take four years of time. He would never again be caught off guard by a case Desmond built behind his back.

---

An hour later he had located Desmond in his office holding a folder.

"There he is." Desmond didn't immediately lift his eyes from his computer screen. “I was beginning to think that you were not renewing.”

“Just wanted to read the vendor terms before I signed off, some of the language felt off.”

This caught Desmond's eye. He turned, slow and unconcerned — the same performance of authority Thane had grown used to after a hundred mornings like this one. But Thane could see the calculation underneath it, the way Desmond's eyes flicked briefly to the folder in his hands.

"Off how?"

“Probably nothing, they have a standard rate escalation clause, but in a different manner that our last three with them had.” Thane's voice was light, wondering, not suspicious. “I want to know why; before I sign my name.”

"You've read a hundred of these."

“Yes, I do. This won't be like that.”

Desmond watched him for an extra second past his comfort zone. Thane refused to blink, letting his heartbeat slow so nothing in his face would give him away, but he had no reason to suspect anything of this version of Desmond. The man in front of him didn't know Thane had already experienced the repercussions of believing in him without question. He was unaware that Thane had passed away believing it.

“You're thinking too hard about it,” Desmond said at last with a wave of the hand. “It's the accountants job, not yours so sign it and let it go. The Ellery folks are breathing down my neck.”

“Give me till the end of day, I’ll have it back to you clean.”

There was a little change in Desmond's expression, though it was not exactly suspicion. It passed quickly, and folded beneath him, warm under his second skin. "Fine. End of day."

"Thank you."

“You've never questioned one of these before.” Desmond managed to keep his voice light, but not his eyes. “How is it different this time?”

Thane had practiced this answer on the way to the gates of the studio and then answered it without hesitation between the ocean and the gates.

“But nothing is different, I just want to be careful, YOU taught me that.” His smile was small and easy — the same one he used to give Desmond without thinking, back when it had still been real “Trust the numbers, not the relationship. Didn't you always say that?”

Desmond's mouth twisted, pleased that his own counsel echoed back to him. “Smart man. Go on then.”

Thane left the office with the folder in his hand like a live wire.

---

The remainder of the morning was devoted to sitting at his desk with the door shut, comparing the Ellery Group's rate history with the three years' worth of prior contracts that had been buried in a drawer. The first time he found it, his hands shook a little — a single line item, slightly inflated, on a page no one would ever double-check. Where he remembered it to be.

He sat there, looking at the number, something settling in his chest that wasn't a part of the life he remembered. Not fear. Certainty.

His phone buzzed. A message from an old contact who thought he might be interested in a distressed acquisition opportunity in Dunmore Row, a message from Wren Halloway's public listing page. But in his former reality, he had deleted an almost identical message without thinking twice, when he was busy building his career and thinking about a struggling small talent agency was of no concern.

This time he read it twice.

He didn't yet know how deeply Wren's failing agency was tangled up with Desmond's fraud. He just knew that in the four years he could remember, Halcyon had somehow got her agency for virtually nothing, was unobtrusive, and no one had ever asked him why a struggling boutique had been allowed to fail in the first place.

There was no such thing as coincidence. He just had no reason to take a closer look.

He had one now.

Instead, Thane shut the Ellery folder, locked it in his desk drawer, and dialed a number he hadn't called before in his life on his phone.

When she responded, he spoke carefully and deliberately, "Ms. Halloway. Hi, my name is Thane Ashworth, I know your agency is looking for investors, I'd like to speak.”

On the other end, there was a long pause, suspicion could be heard even through the silence.

She said “Halcyon doesn't typically call people like me. It just waits for people like me to go away.”

“I'm not calling from Halcyon," Thane said. "Not exactly."

“So, who is it I'm speaking to?”

Thane gazed out at the studio lot spread out below him, at the building that had destroyed him and if he was patient enough, the man responsible for that destruction.

“A buyer who wishes to purchase before the wrongful buyers can bury it first,” he said. “Give me an hour of your time - I think we want the same thing.”

The pause was so long that Thane feared she had hung up.

“I've received three of these calls in the past month," Wren finally said. “All of them wanted the same thing: Buy low, strip the client contracts, sell the name for parts. Forgive me if I'm not rushing to schedule a meeting.”

"I don't want to take anything apart.”

“That's what the previous one said as well.”

Thane walked away from the window, pacing the length of his office. He didn't know her yet, not beyond a name on a forwarded listing and a memory of a company that had quietly slipped away from Halcyon's radar during his old, broken climb through the ranks. But he recalled enough to realize that the agency's failure had no logical explanation.

“Two of your clients have contract options that expire in 14 months,” he said. “Both are about to receive offers from three studios when those offers expire. If your agency fails to make it then, they walk away and whoever buys your name for parts gets all of that upside. It's not a guess, it's math anybody can do if they bother to look.”

There was a pause, a less defensive one this time, a more considering one.

“You've got your homework done.”

“I like to look at numbers that others take for granted.”

“So what are you looking for?”

Thane paused, knowing that the answer he was seeking — that he was attempting to restore a version of the industry that hadn't yet turned against him, one acquisition ahead of a man who didn't realize he was being monitored — would sound like a crazy idea out loud.

“I'll just say I have my own reasons for wanting to see people win who deserve to," he said instead. “If you don't like the offer, you've lost an hour, if you do, your name will remain on the door, not on someone else's.”

There was a change in her tone, it wasn't trust, but curiosity taking over from suspicion.

“Fine. One hour. But I choose the venue, and I will have my own lawyer.”

"Smart," Thane said. “I would not have been disappointed if it was anything else.”

He hung up the phone and returned to his seat, gazing at the locked drawer that held the Ellery folder. Two threads, not quite discernible, but both leading somewhere he didn't quite understand.

He remembered Desmond's easy smile that morning and the lack of suspicion in his eyes. In his old life, that same heat had won him Thane's allegiance and he had no qualms about giving up his future for it.

On this occasion, he planned to use it on the person who had taught it to him.