I plopped into the seat across from her. She gushed with excitement to see me. Then her face fell at the look on my own face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Jane, I need to ask a favor.”
“Anything. Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
“What’s the favor?”
I leaned forward in the booth. “I need your contact for the New York Times. I have something I think she’ll be very interested in.”
Part IV
Best Served Cold
Chapter 25
Penn
“Dr. Kensington?” a voice called, peeping into my office.
I glanced up to see my teaching assistant, Chelle, standing in the doorway. “How can I help you?”
She hopped inside, closing the door behind her. “Amanda has emailed me three times about that paper she ‘forgot’ to turn in.” She mimed quotations around the word forgot. “I told her that, if she sent it in by midnight, we’d accept, minus a letter grade.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“Yes, well, she just turned it in.”
I checked the clock on my iMac. “It’s twenty minutes before lecture.”
“Yep. It looks like she banged it out last night. What should I do?”
I breathed out through my nose in frustration. Amanda was one of the rare female students in the philosophy department. She stalked my office hours to bat her eyelashes at me in hopes that I’d give her a better grade. I was sure it had worked for her in other classes. It didn’t work with me.
“You said midnight. Dock two letter grades for it being late.”
She chewed her lip. “She’s probably going to fail.”
I nodded once. She probably would. And I hated failing students. But I’d grown up in a world where money changed grades. I wasn’t prone to do it myself. No matter who their parents were or how many of them batted their pretty eyelashes at me.
“Okay then. I’ll see you in lecture,” Chelle said and bounced out of my office as quickly as she’d come.
I pushed aside the paper I’d been reading for a peer review I had to do for a journal. I’d been putting it off and putting it off, but it was part of the job. A tedious part.
I dragged out my phone to see if Natalie had messaged me. I knew that she was busy this morning with Harmony, so it was probably wishful thinking. Everything had been…amazing since Charleston. As if a month ago on a boat in the Atlantic, our world had shifted on its axis. And I liked it. I more than liked it.
A month of just us. No interference from my friends. No big fires. Just us living our lives and Natalie falling easily into this world. Maybe easier than I’d like, but we’d been good together. We were good together.
But instead of a message from Natalie, there was a string of them from Lark. And then Rowe. And even…Katherine.
“What the hell?” I murmured, confused as to why I’d be bombarded by the crew.
I clicked on Lark’s messages.
OMG, have you seen the news? I can’t believe what’s happening to Lewis.
Penn? I’m freaking out. Did you know about this?
Gah, you must be in lecture or something. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s the link.
When I saw the headline to the article from the New York Times, I didn’t even bother with Rowe’s or Katherine’s text messages. I just opened the article and began to read.
“Oh fuck,” I gasped.
The article detailed extensive, manipulative, and potentially fraudulent behavior that the Warrens had been dealing with over the last decade. It started with a recent case that Lewis had closed, Anselin-Maguire, and a purchase of land that led to the displacement of hundreds of low-income families, many who were now homeless. Then it traced this behavior back further in time. None of it was expressly illegal. There was no paperwork saying that they weren’t going to kick people off the properties, but they’d contacted a half-dozen people who had sold to the Warrens, who had verbal commitments that the worst would be avoided. And it was a matter of whether or not those verbal contracts would hold up. Either way, it looked like Lewis had seriously fucked up, and an investigation had been opened up into the company.
What else could be lurking under the seemingly perfect exterior?
I knew what this meant. I knew the implications of this. Even if nothing else was wrong. Even if Warren was in tip-top shape, doing everything by the book. This would hurt. This could shake the foundation of the company. A lengthy investigation could halt business growth. Investors could back out. Stocks would drop. They’d lose millions over this article. If the investigation found something else, they could lose the company.
Katherine’s father had lost his in the same way. One investigation had shown the years of securities fraud that proved that Van Pelt was rotten to the core. We’d all known. We’d been there in high school when it all came crumbling down.
I picked up the phone without a thought and dialed Lewis’s number. I might hate him for all he’d done, but…I was still compelled to contact him.
I was more surprised that he answered.
“Kensington,” Lewis said crisply.
“I just heard.”
“Here to gloat?” he asked in a soft voice. Not deadly like I’d expect, but beaten down. Like he’d lost some part of him that had always been there. An overconfidence.
“No. I called to check on you.”
Lewis scoffed in disbelief. “I’m fine,” he bit out. “Stuck at my parents’. It’s a media shitstorm. They’ve parked their vulture asses outside my place and theirs, just waiting for the carnage.”
“So…is it true?”
“You going to sell my answer to the highest bidder?”
“As if I need the money,” I joked.
He laughed slightly at my comment. “Yeah, I suppose we’re still too fucked up with our own secrets for you to pull that shit.”
He wasn’t wrong. We’d always been bound in a tangled web of history and lies and secrets.
Muffled voices cracked through on his end.
“I have to go,” Lewis said. There was a pause, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. “I appreciate your call.”
And he meant it. I could hear it.
The line clicked off, and I stared down at it. What a fucked up world I lived in. How the hell could I sympathize with him about this and also want to slaughter him for the last year of bullshit?
I shut it out and texted Lark.
I read that article and just got off the phone with Lewis. He’s stuck at home with a media circus. Pretty fucked up.
You two actually spoke?! Who knew the world needed to end to accomplish this?
Ha. Ha.
Yeah, well, it’s been a rough couple of months. Anyway, the rest of the crew is meeting at Rowe’s after work. Come over and see the little people.
All right. But if it devolves again, then I’m out of there.