Chapter Eighteen: What the Urgency Covers

Naomi stood on the gravel path with her phone in her hand for a long moment before she called the number back.

Henrik had come to find her partway through loading the last van, drawn by something in her stillness, and he stood a few feet off now, not crowding her, just present, the way he always seemed to know exactly how much space a moment needed. She held up a hand — one second — and dialed.

A young voice answered, clearly flustered. "This is Daniel, I work with Margaret Voss's office — thank you for calling back so fast, she's been trying to reach you—"

"I'm here," Naomi said. "What's the emergency."

"She wanted me to tell you she's found something in your file that concerns her. She said it's time-sensitive, something about the way one of the dates is documented, and she really doesn't want you flying home without talking it through first. She asked if you could call her directly, right away."

Naomi felt something settle into place, cold and certain, the way the last piece of a stroke correction sometimes clicked into focus mid-explanation. Four hours ago, Margaret had told her the file was thin, unreliable, not worth the risk of using. Now, suddenly, there was a problem with it urgent enough to chase her down through a paralegal before she'd even left the mountain.

"Tell her I'll call within the hour," Naomi said, and hung up before Daniel could say anything else.

She turned to find Henrik watching her, his expression carefully neutral in the way she'd learned meant he was waiting for her to lead.

"She wants to talk about a problem with the file," Naomi said. "This afternoon, before I fly home."

"The file she called thin this morning."

"The same one." Naomi looked back toward the lodge, toward the lake going grey now under a sky threatening another round of weather. "She's not worried about a documentation error, Henrik. She's worried about something else, and she wants me rattled enough that I don't think too hard about what it is."

"You're sure."

"I wasn't, this morning. I think I am now." Naomi exhaled slowly, watching her breath cloud in the cooling air. "I told her this afternoon I'd decided to trust her advice and sit tight. That was four hours ago. Nothing's changed since then — except that I also called Priya, and I also mentioned, very casually, that I was planning to get a second opinion from federation counsel once I got home."

Understanding moved across Henrik's face, quick and sharp. "You think she heard about that already."

"I think someone did," Naomi said. "And I think whoever it was didn't like it."

They walked back toward the lodge together, the last of the gear trucks pulling away down the gravel road behind them, athletes waving out the windows at coaches who'd be following in a few hours. Naomi found the quiet of the empty office almost steadying this time, none of the earlier uncertainty from that morning's call. She didn't sit. She stood at the window, phone to her ear, and let it ring.

"Naomi." Margaret's voice, when she finally picked up, had lost some of its earlier polish — not panic, nothing so obvious, but a thinness underneath the warmth that hadn't been there this morning. "Thank you for calling back so quickly."

"Daniel said there was a problem with the file."

"There may be. I was reviewing it again this afternoon, more carefully, and I found a discrepancy in one of your dates — the hotel lobby call, specifically. If the timeline doesn't hold up precisely, it could undermine the credibility of the entire document if this ever went to counsel. I wanted to flag it before you left, so we could discuss how to handle it."

It was, Naomi thought, almost a good lie. Specific enough to sound real, vague enough to survive a surface-level question. Three months ago, she might have believed it entirely. Three hours ago, even, she might have.

"What discrepancy," Naomi said. "Be specific."

A pause, just slightly too long. "I'd rather walk you through it properly, not over the phone while you're packing. Why don't we set a time once you're back, somewhere quiet, and I can show you exactly what I mean."

"You said it was time-sensitive. Urgent enough to chase me down through your paralegal an hour before I leave for the airport." Naomi kept her voice level, almost gentle, the same tone she'd used on Julian at the gate. "That doesn't sound like something that can wait for a quiet sit-down next week."

Another pause, longer this time. When Margaret spoke again, something in her tone had shifted — still careful, but with an edge underneath it now that hadn't been there before, the sound of someone recalculating.

"I only want what's best for you in this, Naomi. I always have."

"I believe you wanted what was best for someone," Naomi said. "I'm no longer certain it was me."

The silence on the line stretched long enough that Naomi could hear, faintly, the sound of Margaret's office in the background — a door, a muffled voice, the particular hum of a place that didn't want to be overheard. When Margaret spoke again, her voice had gone flat, the warmth stripped entirely out of it.

"I'd be careful about the accusations you're making. You don't have the full picture."

"Then give it to me," Naomi said. "Right now. Tell me exactly what's in that file that's suddenly so urgent, or tell me who asked you to make sure I never used it."

Nothing came back but silence, and then, after a moment, the sound of the call ending — not a goodbye, just a dead line, the kind of hang-up that said more than any sentence could have.

Naomi lowered the phone slowly and stood at the window for a long moment, watching the grey clouds build over the ridge, feeling something in her chest that wasn't quite triumph and wasn't quite fear — closer, maybe, to the particular steadiness of finally seeing a shape clearly after staring at its shadow for weeks.

Henrik, who'd stayed by the door through the whole call, didn't ask what happened. He didn't need to; her face had already told him.

"She hung up on me," Naomi said.

"That's an answer in itself."

"It is." Naomi slid the phone into her jacket pocket, her hand steadier than she expected. "I need the file out of her hands entirely, tonight if possible. And I need to know who's been talking to her, because that wasn't a woman worried about one bad date on a timeline. That was a woman worried about being caught."

Henrik crossed the small office and stood in front of her, close enough that she could feel the familiar, steady warmth of him, though he didn't reach for her — not yet, not with this much unfinished in the room between them.

"Then let's go home and find out," he said. "Together, this time. Not quietly."

Naomi nodded, and together they walked out to meet the last van waiting to carry them down the mountain — away from the lake, the gutter lanes, the boathouse where everything had first cracked open, and back toward whatever Margaret Voss was so determined to keep buried.

Her phone buzzed once more as she climbed into the van, a new message lighting the screen — not from Margaret, not from Priya, not from Julian.

A number she didn't recognize at all.

We need to talk. It's about your lawyer, and it's about the Calloways. I know things you don't. Call me when you land.