Chapter 7 - A Witness Who Wouldn't Lie
Maya met us at a busy coffee shop with her sister, Isabel, sitting beside her.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
I told her she could leave whenever she wanted.
That seemed to help more than any promise I could make.
She placed her phone on the table and opened three videos.
The first showed Derek sliding a narrow object into the padding of his glove before the exhibition.
The second showed Claire removing a page from the clipboard and replacing it with another stack after I'd walked onto the mat.
The third showed Price instructing a gym employee to move a camera so it no longer faced the front desk.
Evelyn looked at Maya.
“Why did you keep these?”
“Because I knew somebody was going to get hurt.”
Maya said she'd worked at Apex for two years.
Derek had once been a generous employer, loud but fair.
Things changed after Price began financing the gym.
Private meetings became routine.
Employees were asked to leave the building early.
Derek purchased expensive equipment despite missing payroll twice.
Then Claire started coming around.
“At first I thought it was just an affair,” Maya said.
“I thought Derek liked having something he could show off.”
She hesitated.
“But he kept asking her questions about your old military stuff.”
“Which questions?”
“Where you kept files, whether you still talked to men from your unit, and whether there was a little black drive.”
Nora made careful notes.
“Do you know why?”
Maya shook her head.
“Derek told Price she'd get it after the divorce started.”
I watched traffic move beyond the window.
Fourteen years of shared holidays and ordinary mornings pressed against one ugly possibility.
Had Claire been sleeping with Derek to help them get the drive?
Or had they used her affair to reach me?
Maya opened a fourth recording.
This one captured only audio from a phone she'd left on the desk.
Price's voice was unmistakable.
“Once Mercer looks violent on camera, the board won't care what he says about the files.”
Derek asked, “And I get my gym debt cleared?”
“After the transfer.”
“Claire still gets the house?”
“Assuming she follows instructions.”
Maya stopped the recording.
I didn't move.
That was the answer.
The exhibition had been designed to create damaging footage, push me into an unfavorable signature, and make me look unreliable if I reported anything afterward.
Nora looked at Evelyn.
“We need to preserve every original and take this to the right investigators.”
Before we left, Maya caught my sleeve.
“There is something else.”
She opened a still image taken from the gym's rear camera.
It showed Price entering a silver SUV with a white-haired man.
Rourke, who had joined us late, froze when he saw him.
“That's not Price's investor,” he said.
May you like
“That's the man who signed the original false shipment reports.”
