The Devil's Ledger

Chapter 6— A Change Of Story

The new lawyer's name was Denise Okafor, and she introduced herself the way people introduce themselves when they've already decided the introduction doesn't matter much.

"I've got forty-one open cases," she said, dropping a thin folder on the table between them. "I've read enough of yours to know it's complicated. I don't have time for complicated, Mr. Cross, so tell me quickly — is there anything in this file that's actually going to help you, or is this a lost cause I'm managing until sentencing?"

Nathan studied her for a moment. Overworked, underslept, the particular exhaustion of someone who'd stopped believing the system worked a long time ago but kept showing up anyway. He decided, cautiously, that he could work with that. Exhausted people were sometimes more honest than hopeful ones.

"There's a witness list in there," he said. "Priya Nandan. She worked the audit with me. If anyone can confirm the timeline of what I actually found and when, it's her."

Okafor flipped through the folder, found the page, and her expression shifted into something Nathan didn't like.

"She's not confirming anything." Okafor turned the folder around so he could see. "Amended statement, filed six days ago. She now says you asked her to falsify several of the transaction records herself, and that she refused, which is why you cut her out of the later stages of the audit."

Nathan read the statement twice, feeling something cold settle behind his sternum. "That's not what happened. I limited her access because that's standard practice — you don't hand a junior analyst the full pattern until you're sure what you're looking at."

"I believe you. That's not the problem." Okafor tapped the page. "The problem is a signed, notarized statement from your own colleague now says the opposite, and juries don't care about your standard practices when they've got a real person testifying that you asked her to help commit fraud."

"She wouldn't say that." Nathan's voice stayed level, but only barely. "I've worked with her for two years. She's careful. Honest. She wouldn't just—"

He stopped himself before he said something he couldn't prove. Two weeks ago he would have said the same thing about Halloway staying on his case, about his father living long enough to see this cleared up, about a version of his life that no longer existed.

"People change statements for reasons that have nothing to do with the truth," Okafor said, not unkindly. "Fear's usually the reason. Money's the other one. I don't know which this is yet."

Nathan thought about the phone call to Halloway. The reach that could find a public defender's daughter's school schedule within four days. He didn't have to guess very hard which reason had gotten to Priya Nandan.

"I need to see her," he said.

"You need to stay in your cell and not do anything that gets flagged as witness tampering, is what you need to do." Okafor closed the folder. "I'll look into whether the statement holds up to scrutiny. That's the most I can promise you right now."

The yard was the one place Nathan had learned to almost tolerate, an hour a day of open sky between four walls of concrete, and he'd taken to walking its perimeter alone, using the time to think rather than to socialize. He'd never been much for conversation that didn't serve a purpose, and in here, purposeless conversation could get you noticed for reasons you didn't want.

He didn't notice the man behind him until it was almost too late.

It happened fast, the way real violence always does, nothing like the slow-motion drama of movies. A shoulder into his back, hard, off-balance, and then a forearm across his throat pulling him backward into the shadow of the recreation building where the yard's one blind camera angle sat. Nathan's hands went instinctively to the arm at his neck, fingers digging in, air going thin fast, and some distant analytical part of his brain noted, almost professionally, that this wasn't a random yard fight. Random fights didn't happen in blind spots.

"Somebody wants you real quiet, accountant," a voice said close to his ear, low enough that no camera mic would catch it even if the angle had been better. "Real quiet, real permanent."

Nathan drove his elbow back hard, connected with something solid enough to loosen the grip half an inch, enough air to gasp and twist, enough to see his attacker's face for a fraction of a second — a big man, shaved head, a tattoo he didn't have time to place before the arm tightened again and black spots started crawling in at the edges of his vision.

A whistle cut through the yard, sharp and close.

"Break it up! Break it up now!"

The arm around Nathan's throat released so fast he stumbled forward onto his hands and knees, coughing, dragging air back into his lungs in ragged pulls. Boots pounded past him. By the time he could look up, the attacker was already being wrestled to the ground by two officers, and a third was crouched in front of Nathan, hand steady on his shoulder.

"Easy. Breathe. You're all right."

Nathan looked up into the face of a guard he didn't recognize, young, calm in a way that didn't quite match the chaos around them, like he'd known exactly where to be and exactly when.

"You're not one of the regular yard officers," Nathan managed, voice raw.

"Reyes. Transferred in last week." The guard helped him to his feet, and something in his expression, some flicker of deliberate steadiness, made Nathan look at him more closely. "You should ask for medical after this. And Mr. Cross—" he lowered his voice, just for the two of them, just long enough to say what he needed to say before the other officers arrived "—you should also ask yourself why a man with no prior violent history and eleven months left on a burglary sentence would risk a murder charge to put his hands on you specifically, in the one blind spot in this yard, on a day I happened to be the one covering it."

Nathan stared at him. "Are you telling me you were placed here on purpose?"

Reyes's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes did, a warning and an offer at the same time. "I'm telling you that you're not as safe in here as the paperwork says you are, and that you should be very careful who you trust for the next little while." He straightened, stepped back, voice returning to its regulation flatness as the other officers approached. "Medical, now. Let's move."

Nathan let himself be led toward the infirmary, throat aching, hands still trembling slightly with the aftershock of adrenaline, and beneath the fear, something else was starting to take shape. A question he didn't dare ask out loud yet, not here, not with cameras and ears everywhere.

Who was Officer Reyes really working for, and why did it feel less like he'd stopped an attack by accident, and more like he'd been waiting for exactly this moment to introduce himself?