He buried the wrong man

Chapter 4: Man who never checks his numbers

The next morning, Barrett Voss discovered Thane in the executive break room, with two coffees, one of which was obviously a peace offering.

Barrett looked at him and said, "You look like you haven't slept in a week. Everything okay?"

"Define okay."

"That's not reassuring."

Thane wrapped both hands around the cup, but he didn't drink from it, he looked at nothing in particular. He'd known Barrett for six years, since Barrett transferred over from the marketing side. In another life — the one that ended in a holding cell — Barrett had been given Thane's old office within a month of his arrest. Not for any ambition. Out of survival. There was a need to fill the spot and Barrett happened to be standing closest.

Thane had never faulted him for it. He wasn't sure he could say the same about how it felt to watch Barrett now — happy and oblivious, holding a cup of coffee as if nothing had changed.

“I need a favor," said Thane. "Off the books."

Barrett's smile was slightly ashen. “That's the start of a conversation that I should be recording.”

“It's okay to be cautious.” Thane lowered his voice, looking at the hallway once before. “I want to see three years of vendor contract history — not the summary reports — the line-item invoices, back to before we were in our current roles.”

“It's an odd request for a Tuesday.”

“I'm conducting a cost-efficiency review. Desmond wants more scrutiny on vendor spending for next quarter.”

It was not a lie, because, years ago, Desmond had said something like that at a meeting Thane could only just remember now. It wasn't entirely the truth, though, and Barrett's raised eyebrow suggested he knew what he'd heard wasn't the whole story.

“Did Desmond ask you to do this?”

“I don't have to get Desmond's approval for all of the internal reviews I perform.”

“It's not a comforting thought either.”

Thane placed the coffee down, making eye contact with Barrett. “I'm asking you because I know you're honest and because I want you to keep this to yourself until I can tell you about it in detail. Can you do that?"

Barrett studied him for a long time, as if weighing years of easy friendship against the sudden, strange weight of the request. “I'm a little worried about you, Thane.”

"I know."

“Is there something in particular you're looking for, or are you just being thorough?”

Thane hesitated, aware of exactly how much he couldn't say yet — that the man standing in front of him, sipping his coffee like any other Tuesday, would one day take the stand and testify against him with real, genuine belief that he was telling the truth, because Desmond would make certain the evidence pointed nowhere else. Barrett would never lie under oath. He'd just be wrong, just like Thane had been wrong about everything.

Finally, Thane said, "It's specific. I can't tell you more at this time, I need you to trust me.”

Barrett took a deep breath, looking toward the doorway now, an old instinct for institutional caution kicking in. "You know how this looks, right? Senior VP who is secretly removing years of vendor records without proper authorization, and when asked why I helped you access that, I need more than Thane asked nicely.”

“If there's ever a time when I have to, I'll take responsibility.”

“It's easy to say now.”

“Yes, I know,” Thane whispered. "I'm asking anyway."

His tone must have had more impact than he had intended, because Barrett's expression changed, from curiosity to something more serious. “It's not the Ridgeline budget, right?”

"No."

“Is it to do with Desmond?”

Thane didn't respond immediately, and the absence of any response, seemed to answer the question sufficiently. Barrett lowered his voice, put his arms across his chest and set his coffee down.

“You've been acting funny since yesterday, Reyna said, you didn't renew your routine with the vendor, and you won't tell me why you want their years of history off the books.” He looked at Thane carefully. “I have known you for a long time, I have never seen you like this.”

“I promise I will explain everything, when I have something to explain.”

"And if I say no?"

“Then I find another way, and this conversation never happened.”

Barrett was silent for a while, his expression unreadable. Lastly, he uncrossed his arms and exhaled slowly.

“I will do what I can without drawing attention to myself, I'll give it a few days.” He jabbed his finger at Thane, half in jest. “But if it goes wrong, I'm saying it's your idea.”

"Fair."

"And Thane." There was a bit of softness in Barrett's voice, a bit of concern, but it was hidden behind caution. "Whatever this is — if you're in trouble, actual trouble, you'd tell me. Right?"

Thane looked at him for a long moment, thinking of a courtroom four years from now that might never exist if he did this right, thinking of Barrett's voice cracking on the stand in a version of events he was trying to forget.

“I would tell you," replied Thane. "When I can."

It was not a lie, per se. It just wasn't the whole truth either, and Thane was starting to realize how many half-truths this second chance was going to require before it was over.

Barrett slowly nodded, seeming content enough to leave it at that, and resumed his coffee. “I'll be in touch. Sleep, you say? You seem to be carrying the whole weight of the whole studio on your shoulders.”

Thane was about to laugh, but it was a short, humorless laugh, one that even he was surprised by.

“Yeah, something like that,” he replied.

---

Barrett went into the break room first, grabbed a cup of coffee and was already plotting his cover story for why he'd be pulling old vendor files without raising any red flags in finance. Thane remained behind for a moment longer, gazing at the wall of framed posters that lined the hallway out front — decades of Halcyon releases, some of which he'd helped shepherd through production himself, back when his biggest concern was box office projections rather than buried fraud.

He was thinking of the Barrett that had been on the stand against him. Not out of malice. Out of belief. Desmond's case was so well constructed, so tightly argued, that even those with the most at stake in Thane's fate weren't troubled by it. That was the part that still ate at him more than the verdict itself — not that Desmond had destroyed him, but that he'd done it so completely no one around Thane had even needed to question their own trust in Desmond to accept it.

This time it would be different. This time Barrett will have something to build on before Desmond has a chance to set the story.

As he made his way back to his office, Thane's phone rang. The name Ines Calloway appeared on the screen — a name that had not yet been fully lived, from a business card he still carried from a professional mixer he could hardly remember attending. In the four years he'd already survived once, he'd never once reached out to her. Not until a federal investigator mentioned her during his trial as one who had previously reported similar irregularities at another studio, then quietly sent packing.

He hadn't called her yet in this life. He wasn't ready to. Not until he had something real enough to bring her, something that wouldn't sound like paranoia, but like diligence.

He put the phone back in his pocket and continued his walk, turning over the idea of what was still to come. The time it would take to read Barrett's files would be days. There was the Ellery Group renewal, which was still in his drawer, unsigned, a gesture of defiance that could unravel everything if Desmond pushed a little harder than expected. Wren Halloway was signing documents in Dunmore Row, and they were documents that bound them together, but neither of them knew what they were getting themselves into.

Four years ago, there were no such threads. He had walked through all these same hallways, believing each of Desmond's smiles and never once wondering why a man who called him son never once showed him the entire financial situation of the studio.

This time, he was going to see all of it, whatever the cost.

When he arrived at his office the morning sun was in the right position, directly across his desk, and the closed drawer held the unsigned folder. He sat down, opened his laptop and started to write the outline of a cost-efficiency review to provide him a legitimate excuse to continue pulling records without arousing suspicion, a paper trail concealing a very different paper trail.

It was slow work. Careful work. The kind of patience that Desmond had once lauded him for, but now translated into a weapon directed right at the man who taught him patience.