The question escaped before she could stop it.
Rachel did not rush to answer.
"I don't know you yet," she said. "My job isn't to decide whether you're innocent based on a phone call. My job is to find out what happened, protect your rights, and make sure the facts aren't buried beneath someone else's version of events."
It was not the reassurance Evelyn had wanted.
It was better.
For the first time that night, someone had spoken to her as though she were a person with rights rather than a problem to be managed.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Get some sleep if you can. Tomorrow, we begin with the documents."
After the call, Evelyn closed her laptop.
She lay down without turning off the bedside lamp.
Outside, rain tapped against the window.
She had lost her position, her home, and the trust of people she had known for years.
But the unknown message had given her something she had not possessed when she left the ballroom.
A direction.
Northbridge.
She did not yet know what the name meant, or why someone was afraid she might investigate it.
But she knew one thing.
If Adrian had truly believed she was finished, he would not have needed to warn her to stop.
Rachel Morgan's office occupied the fourth floor of an old commercial building between a pharmacy and a bakery.
There was no marble reception desk, no expensive sculpture, and no framed photograph of Rachel shaking hands with a famous politician.
The waiting room contained four chairs, a water dispenser, and a bookshelf filled with legal reference books.
Evelyn arrived at 8:35 a.m.
She had slept for perhaps two hours.
Rachel emerged from her office ten minutes later, carrying a thin folder.
She was in her early forties, with dark hair cut just below her chin and the alert, slightly tired expression of someone accustomed to hearing complicated stories from people who had waited too long to ask for help.
"You look exhausted," Rachel said.
"I am."
"That's understandable. Coffee?"
"Please."
They entered the office.
Rachel offered Evelyn the chair opposite her desk and placed a cup of coffee within reach.
"Before you tell me anything else, I want to establish the limits of what I can do today. I can review your personal documents, advise you on employment and property issues, and help you respond to formal allegations. I cannot promise that the company will reinstate you, and I cannot make a criminal investigation disappear if one has been opened."
"I don't expect you to."
"Good. I also need you to be completely honest with me, even about things that might make you look bad."
Evelyn nodded.
Rachel opened a blank notebook.
"Start with the beginning. Not the announcement. The first moment you noticed something was wrong."
Evelyn described the canceled Northbridge meeting, the restructuring proposal, and the financial reports she had questioned in recent months.
She explained that several construction projects had exceeded their budgets, but the explanations had been inconsistent. One report attributed increased costs to materials. Another cited contractor delays. A third referred to consulting fees.
At the time, she had assumed that the company was dealing with ordinary operational problems.
Now she wondered whether those problems had been manufactured.
Rachel made notes.
"Who had authority over the payments?"
"The finance director controlled payment processing. The chief financial officer approved transactions above the department limit. I approved major project expenditures, but not routine transfers."
"Could you initiate payments yourself?"
"Only through the company's approval system. Every transaction left a record."
"Did you ever authorize a payment to a company you knew was fictitious?"
"No."
"Did you approve any payment without reviewing the supporting documents?"
Evelyn hesitated.
Rachel looked up.
"Take your time."
"Sometimes I approved batches of invoices after reviewing the summary reports. That was standard procedure. I relied on finance to verify the supporting documentation, and I relied on the project directors to confirm that the work had been completed."
"That doesn't automatically mean you did anything wrong. But if someone used your approval authority to authorize fraudulent payments, the distinction between what you personally reviewed and what you approved will matter."
Evelyn nodded slowly.
For the first time, she understood how the allegations might have been constructed.
She had not needed to create false invoices herself.
Someone might have inserted them into a legitimate payment batch, attached her approval to the overall release, and then presented the resulting transaction history as evidence that she had knowingly authorized every payment.
The idea made her feel sick.