Page 92 of Unlocked

Archer set the tray on the dining table and began uncovering the plates. Chicken, vegetables, bread, and something that smelled extraordinary. Her stomach growled audibly and she pressed her hand to it.

"Eat first," he said.

"I need to tell you⁠—"

"You can tell me while you eat." He pulled out a chair and looked at her.

She sat. He poured the wine and sat across from her, and she talked while she ate, which was something she almost never did. He listened without interrupting in the way he had of listening that made her feel like every word was being cataloged and considered.

She told him about James R. Hollis first. Watched his face as she explained the alias, Gil's joke, the pattern across the documents.

"Gil Bennett," Archer said.

"Gil Bennett," she confirmed. "A man who is friendly with Lou Anderson. Who is not representing Anderson in the lawsuit, which I initially assumed was my parents’ pulling strings." She took a sip of wine. "But I think it might be because Gil can't be anywhere near the Anderson case without drawing attention to his own involvement."

Archer was already reaching for his phone. He typed a message, sent it, and set the phone back down. "One of my people will do a full workup on Bennett. Everything. His finances, his client list, his movements for the last two years."

"The alias is a mistake," Tatum said. "A sloppy one. The kind of mistake someone makes when they think they're completely safe. The kind of mistake Gil would make because, well, he’s Gil. Good-natured, hard-working, and slightly careless.

“My parents had encouraged us to date, but Gil wasn’t my type.” Not many men were her type. How many Archer Grays were out there? She swallowed a gulp of wine. Not a good path for her mind to stroll down.

She frowned, “I thought he was a good guy, but I have always known he didn’t pay attention to detail the way someone at his level should. We worked on a case together a few years ago, and I had to redo a couple of things Gil had done. No major mistakes, but loopholes were left open by the careless use of language.

“I know his paralegal, Diane, goes over everything Gil does just in case. She told Sam, my assistant, about it. She said that if Gil goes down, then he’ll take her with him. She knows because any mistakes anyone finds, he immediately blames on her. Then he feels guilty and gives her big bonuses.”

"Arrogance," Archer said.

"Yes." She put her fork down. "There's something else."

She told him about the account. Davis and the cleanup crew. The same source, the same funding.

Archer went very still.

By now, she’d learned to read his stillness. This one was the particular quality of a man who had just had a suspicion confirmed in a way that changed the shape of everything.

"That puts Davis inside the Curator's operation," he said quietly. "Not just connected to the scheme. Inside the operation itself."

"Yes." She put down her fork. The food seemed to form a lump in her stomach.

Archer sat back. His eyes moved to the middle distance for a moment in the way they did when he was working through something, and she watched him and thought, not for the first time, that there was something extraordinary about the way his mind worked. Precise and fast and always three steps ahead of where the conversation was.

"How did you get these files?" she asked.

Archer picked up his wine glass.

"Archer."

He took a sip.

"You're ignoring the question."

"Yes," he agreed pleasantly, and set the glass back down. “One of my team.”

“Well, whoever it was is extraordinarily good at organization and detail work.”

Archer nodded.

She looked at him for a moment. Then she let it go. She had learned, slowly and somewhat reluctantly, that there were things about how Archer operated that she was not going to get answers to, and that pushing on those things was like pushing on a wall. Solid and immovable and completely uninterested in her opinion about it.